Interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff June 23, 2005 ...collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.106.0166_trs_en.pdf · Interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff June 23, 2005 2 the

Interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff June 23, 2005

Beginning Tape One, Side A

Question: This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer collection

interview with Renate Chernoff, conducted by Gail Schwartz on June 23rd, 2005 in

Potomac, Maryland. This is tape number one, side A. Could you give me your full

name please?

Answer: My name is Renate Rosemarie Fischer Chernoff.

Q: And where were your born and when were you born?

A: I was born on June 25th, 1929, in Breslau, Germany. Germ -- Breslau is now

Polish, but it was German at that point in time.

Q: Let’s talk a little bit about your family background. How far back did your family

go in Breslau?

A: My family actually went very far back, I would say. I have records to -- o-of

graves having been erected in -- just right after the Napoleonic war, the Franco-

Prussian War. And of all strange things, one of the graves that may have survived

all the fighting in that area is still standing today. I managed to get a picture of it just

very recently on the web. And we were very excited to see that gravestone.

Q: What -- what was your father’s name?

A: My father was Walter James Fischer. He was a psychiatrist. He went to school

in his native town of Breslau where most of my forebears were born. He was -- is

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This is a verbatim transcript of spoken word. It is not the primary source, and it has not been checked for spelling or accuracy.


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the professional person in his family. His parents were merchants, they had a

wonderful -- probably the largest toyshop in all of Silesia, and he chose not to go

into that kind of work, perhaps because he was in the army in -- in the first World

War, and fought in France, fought in Verdun, came back and -- and at that point he

was only 16 or 18 years old. And came back totally paralyzed by what he had seen;

he was a litter bearer in the field, and decided that medicine would be his calling. S -

- my grandmother and grandfather had the shop, both of them worked. My

grandmother worked alongside her husband and so did her sister and his brother.

They were two brothers married to two sisters, and so it was definitely a family

affair. And their parents, my great-grandparents were also in Breslau. What they did

I’m really not sure, but in -- in business of some sort. The business, interestingly

enough -- the house where the business was housed is standing today in the very

same place, it was one of the few buildings that survived the second World War. It

was on the rink, the main square of the city of Breslau, right opposite the court

buildings. It’s number 26 on -- number 36, excuse me, on the rink. And I have seen

reproductions of that area, or photographs of that area and sure enough, it’s still

there. The Poles have really taken a great deal of trouble to try to rebuild that area as

it was, and I think s -- handled it very successfully. My forbearers on my mother’s

side were from Birnbaum, which is really on the Polish side. What -- my




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grandfather on my mother’s side was in the canning business, and was the first

canner who did diabetic fruits in Germany, canned diabetic fruits. And had the

factory just outside of Breslau and so my mother grew up really in the country, in

this -- it’s suburban now, but it was really country when she grew up, and that she

loved. And she did go to school in Breslau, but the rest of the time she was a

country girl.

Q: And was she a housewife?

A: Actually, she was, although she went to high school and upon graduating from

high school went to a sort of a finishing school for girls and studied music. She had a

magnificent voice, and was very nicely trained, and sang eventually professionally,

in part, but always sang for the high holidays at synagogue. And in fact, I came

across a letter just the other day, the head of the synagogue in Ratibor, which was

one of the places where we lived, thanked her for making the service so beautiful.

Q: In talking about the synagogue, can you tell a little bit about how religious your

family was?

A: My grandparents on both sides were fairly religious. My father was pretty much

of a free thinker. My mother was more religious than he, but I think both of them

became very, very much more religious when we crossed over to this side of the

ocean.




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Q: Mm-hm. Did you, as a small child, remember celebrating any holidays?

A: Oh yes, we always celebrated holidays and I particularly remember Sukkot in the

synagogue in Ratibor, which is the little town that I really remember best of all. It

was in the -- in Upper Silesia, which was a number of hours by train from Breslau

going towards the Czech border and the Polish border, we were sort of in a -- very

close, within walking distance of the Polish border, because I remember walking

with my mother to have buttermilk on the Polish side of the border because the

farmer -- that farmer’s buttermilk was by all means the very best, and so we walked

across wheat fields and over the border to get our buttermilk. Very nice memory.

Q: So did you celebrate Shabbat, did you go to synagogue?

A: We celebrated Shabbat, my mother kindled candles. We celebrated Passover, but

mostly we celebrated our Passovers, and I have very vivid memories with very dear

friends who were Orthodox, I believe. And we s -- I went to services on Saturday

mornings, not with my parents, but with a friend of theirs who took me not only to

synagogue on Saturday mornings, but took me out for a krimmelhelmchen which

was a poppy seed roll o-on our way home. And that made a great impression on me.

But my grandpar -- my grandmother -- I think all of them were really liberal Jews

rather than Orthodox Jews. I think tha-that it was not named Conservative, I think




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that branch of Jewry in Germany was called the liberal branch and we went to

synagogue there rather than the Orthodox synagogue.

Q: Were your parents very politically active?

A: They had very strong opinions. Active, I wouldn’t say, no. Ma -- I think my

father’s days were so full with his -- with his work, and with work for the courts. He

was very often asked to be the s -- the psychiatrist who gave opinions in court cases.

And they were very active at their lodge, the B’nai Brith lodge. That I do

remember.

Q: Let’s just get a sense of a structure here with how long you lived where. Y-You

said you were born in Breslau, and how long did you live there?

A: All right. We were born -- I was born in Breslau. When my father w -- a-already

was working in a suburban area -- area called Obernigk. O-b-e-r-n-i-g-k, I think. It

was a suburb of Breslau and had a large psychiatric hospital in it. And there he had

his job and there we lived. Now, I was very little and really have no memories other

than picture memories of that place. It was the same town that my grandparents had

the canning factory in, so this all worked out very nicely in that respect. We moved,

I believe it was 1934 to Ratibor, R-a-t-i-b-o-r, it is now also in Polish hands and

has changed its name just a little. And I think when we moved we -- I was i -- going

into nursery kindergarten, and I went to the school of the Ursuline sisters and I




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loved my time there. They were so good to us, and they -- I learned so many little

skills, and I even still have the little needle book that I embroidered for my mother,

my first timid effort at working with fibers, and it was very precious to my mother,

and a little moth-eaten but I still have it. And we moved into our first house and we

rented an apartment on Svingerstrasser 17 and within a month or two we were

asked to leave because we were unwanted. The owner of the house didn’t realize

that somebody with the name of Fischer could be Jewish. And so we moved and

found a very nice apartment on number 23 Svingerstrasser, and I have very vivid

memories of it, I could draw the plan of the apartment. It was a first floor walk-up,

very large apartment and my father was able to have his practice right in our

apartment. The first room was very large, with -- I can’t think of the English word

for the moment. It’s a-a-an [indecipherable] a a no -- a no -- a knockout, a glass

knockout so that one could really watch the street up and down and see what’s going

on and it was an up -- first floor, upstairs, and large. And then the room next to us

was the waiting room. And during the day it was the waiting room for the patients

and in the evening it was the gentlemen’s room to have cigarettes. And as we walked

down the corridor, there was a kitchen to the left in which Maria, our very dear

domestic help who lived with us, did her thing. And then further down, of course,

was the dining room and the living room and my bedroom and my parent’s room.




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Q: So you were an only child?

A: I -- yes, yes.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: My mother always said Mr. Hitler saw to it that I was an only child. They would

-- they were ready to have a rather lar -- and had hoped for a rather large family.

However, I did acquire a brother a little later on, but that’s another story.

Q: Were either of your parents artistic?

A: My mother sang very beautifully and my father always thought that he might

have, if he had not become a physician he might have become an architect. So I

think yes, I would say so. They both had extremely fine taste in things that they

chose to buy, and yeah, I would s -- and my mother’s singing, of course, was quite --

quite remarkable.

Q: What languages did you speak at home?

A: German only. My mother knew some French and my father studied Greek and

Latin in school, and -- but of course it was the reading language of Greek and Latin,

I don’t know that he spoke it, other than memorized poetry.

Q: Was it a mixed neighborhood -- we’re now talking about Ratibor because you

said you didn’t really remember before that, is that correct?

A: That’s right, yeah.




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Q: Yeah, so can you -- was it a mixed neighborhood of Jews and non-Jews?

A: Yes, it was definitely a mixed -- a mixed neighborhood. I don’t think that

Ratibor had a specifically Jewish area, I think we were all very well here and there.

I-I cannot think of -- of a Jewish neighborhood, per se. The neighborhood where we

lived was -- was a nicely treed neighborhood. It was a main street, and yet it had

trees on it and in the back of our house was a -- every apartment had its own little

garden, and so we raised strawberries. It was a small garden, but we raised

strawberries and flowers and there was a little house on the garden, in the back of

the garden, big enough to have a table and maybe six or eight chairs and I know my

mother’s book club met there in the summertime. And of course, I loved playing in

the garden. And I had a nanny who made sure that I learned how to grow things and

to weed, and to take care of flowers and who was really my steady companion after I

came home from school each day.

Q: So did you play with any of the other chil-children in the neighborhood or just

with your nanny after school?

A: You know, it was easy, it was -- well, not -- perhaps not the children in my

neighborhood because across from our house were the courts, the courts of that part

of the province. So there were not that many houses that had children in them.

Q: You’re talking about judicial courts, not --




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A: Judicial courts.

Q: -- not courtyards.

A: No, no, no, no, judicial courts. But one usually made appointments with one’s

friends and after school they could come to my house and it was always -- I always

had a lot of little friends who came over and whose company I enjoyed and whose

homes I went to as well. Not for very long, but for awhile.

Q: Right. Were these Jewish and non-Jewish children?

A: We had -- I had very close Jewish and non-Jewish friends, and I was very

fortunate enough to have the non-Jewish friends because some of them were really

lovely children with whom I enjoyed being together. And we were together really,

until the time when it was no longer allowed that these little girls, particularly, could

come and visit me. My very dearest friend was a young girl by the name of Ushi

Blaut, whose father was an architect for the city, and who was threatened to lose his

job if his little girl came and played with me. And I think maybe that was the first

awakening that things were very strange.

Q: That was your first awakening.

A: My first awakening.

Q: And -- and what was -- do you remember -- granted, you were very young, but do

you remember any thoughts you had at that time, or what that meant to you?




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A: It meant a great deal to me because we saw very much eye to eye and we loved

being naughty together. I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t -- I could see her at

school, but yet she couldn’t come to my house after school, and I couldn’t visit her

any more. And that -- that started -- I mean, that kind of began and then it was like

something rolling on and on and on and it -- and it was -- I tell you, the one thing

that I do remember is by going through some old photographs, I did find out that she

was allowed to come to my birthday party and I think that must have meant a lot to

me, and it was very special, but on a day to day basis, she couldn’t visit.

Q: Do you remember which birthday party it was?

A: I think it was my fifth -- fifth and sixth birthday parties. Now, I -- as I say, I could

not visit her, she could not visit me, but birthday parties seemed to be kosher.

Q: So this would be 1934 - ’35?

A: Mm-hm, yes.

Q: Hitler came into power in 1933.

A: ’33.

Q: What was your very first memory of him?

A: I think one of the most frightening things were the parades through our streets.

And I mentioned the bay window earlier on, which gave wonderful visibility to

everything that was going up and down the street. And the night that the brownshirts




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were having their parades, I remember my nanny holding me in her arms and we

were watching it. It was nighttime, it was with candles lit and loud singing and --

and boisterous goings on on the street. And I wish I could tell you what year that

was, that I don’t remember. But I remember the fact -- oh, I remember the fact, I

remember the shirts, I remember the glistening on the black boots. And we were one

story up. But it seemed like endless numbers of people were marching and marching

and marching. And yet, that part of Germany, I think was not as badly off as other

parts of Germany. Somehow we were late, I think, in receiving the blows, so to

speak. I think things were worse in other places, but I do recall this vividly and even

today when I talk about it, I get a little chilly.

Q: What did your nanny say to you? Do you remember if she tried to comfort you or

said anything special?

A: I think she held me. She hugged me. She herself was so appalled at what was

going on, I think, and understandable for her. And for Maria, our -- our help in that

-- our live-in help in the house. Maria was a very simple Polish woman, who did all

the housework for us, and was -- and lived with us, and when she would go to

church and come home, she would always tell us what the father’s sermon was, each

week. She would share that with us. She was totally against the regime, although her

brother was a member of the Nazi party, and I remember having him come and visit




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and he sat out in the kitchen with her while she was preparing coffee or something.

And he proudly showed off the lap -- other side of his lapel, with a swastika attached

to it. When he came into the house he had the good sense of putting it on the reverse

side. Most of the time I think he had it on the real side, he was a Nazi of the first

order. But not his sister. Maria was a gentle, wonderful soul, with whom we kept in

touch through the war -- not during the war, but after the war. She wrote to my

parents and she wrote as long as they allowed mail to go through and I have le -- her

letters t-to this day. And she actually, after my grandmother was deported, she

actually walked out of the house and walked til she came across to the Czech side of

the border. She couldn’t stand being in Germany. And she say -- she went into the

service of a priest in Czechoslovakia and survived the war.

Q: What does it mean to a little girl to see a swastika?

A: Then, or now?

Q: Then.

A: I think frightening. Terrifying to -- to say the least. I of course didn’t understand

the ins and outs behind it all, but there was something frightening about the image.

Q: Did your parents ever explain anything on their own, or did you go up and ask

them? Granted, you were very young.




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A: I don’t think that I was old enough to ask the right questions. They, of course,

tried to shield me. Things got very difficult in Ratibor. My father, who was in

private practice, when the decree came out that only Jewish patients could go to

Jewish doctors, his patients, of course had to hold off coming. Although strangely

enough in the middle of the night, very often the back door knocked, it was a patient

who didn’t want to be seen entering the doctor’s house, would come. And of course,

my father saw him. And patients asked him to come and see them. And he did not

have a car, and in the early days he went to see his patients by bicycle. But later on,

he got a motorcycle, yeah, a big do -- it was my father and his pale green motorcycle

and his one piece suit, which covered him all the way from over his head, to his

shoes, with a zip in front. Went to see his patients in Poland, and he would take his

motorcycle and go over. And there was the standing joke, he stopped at the -- at the

customs bureau -- at the customs office to get his papers signed that he was going

across the border and about an hour later he would come back and the border guard

sniffed -- he would sniff, oh Dr. Fischer, you have just seen a patient? Yes, and the

payment was two wonderful Polish sausages that were hanging on the inside of his

suit. They knew it, they looked the other way. It was just -- it was an -- an accepted

norm. And so people did come and he did still help people who needed help, i-if

they could just get to his hou -- to our house and not be seen. But one morning -- and




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I don’t remember what year it was, there was a big yellow sign plastered all over the

entryway. And Maria went outside as always to pick up the milk and the fresh rolls

that were left at the doorstep and she removed the sign. And the sign said, De Jude

lugt. The Jew lies. And she tore it off very quickly and tore it up.

Q: How did you know about this?

A: My father told me. Yeah. And I think maybe that was sort of the beginning of

when he thought probably it would be better to move to a larger city, and so -- and

many people did move from the smaller towns, hoping to find their place and a

better way of life in the larger city. So in 1936, I think it was 1936, he decided to go

to Breslau. And so there was movement afoot to move the family, mother and me,

up to Breslau. But the move was going to be a difficult one, he already saw the

handwriting on the wall. And so I was sent to Berlin to stay with my other granny,

my mother’s mother, who lived in [indecipherable] in Berlin, and also, I was not

allowed to go to school any more. Jewish children were not allo -- were not accepted

at school any more, so it -- there was a duel reason for moving. I had to go to Jewish

school. And there was no Jewish school. There were too few people in Ratibor for a

Jewish school to be there, so I was sent to live with my grandmother in Berlin and to

continue my education at a Jewish school, which I did, while my parent

[indecipherable] while my parents were moving.




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Q: Do you remember what some of your thoughts were and your feelings were when

you had to leave to go to Berlin?

A: I disliked it with a vengeance. I did not want to go to Berlin and I have letters

that I wrote home, I have them in my keep. Please take me home, I don’t want to

stay here, I don’t like Berlin. It was all very strange to me, and living with my

grandmother was sort of an unknown, I didn’t know her really that well. And she

was a darling, kind, wonderful person, but it wasn’t my mother and it wasn’t my

father and I didn’t know my surroundings. Not a soul did I know other than her, and

I was deeply, deeply unhappy in Berlin and I had to stay there through maybe one or

two semesters. And by that time, Mother and Father had moved to Breslau, but this

was a sort of an interesting thing, they were not allowed to live with my

grandmother. My grandmother had an enormous house, really. Beautiful house with

spectacular gardens, a flower garden and a vegetable garden and a fruit garden and a

-- it was really -- it was a semi-attached -- semi-detached? Semi-attached. Well, they

were two houses together, but they were both enormous, and wi-with lots of help.

There was a gardener, and there was a lady who came in and did the laundry and

there were two people who just cleaned and cooked and washed and did things in the

house. And she had some borders because she was at this point by herself, my -- her

husband had passed away. Her husband, my Omi Hadel Fischer’s husband passed




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away of natural causes in 1936, I think it was and so there was plenty of room for us

to have a very comfortable existence in the main house, but the Nazi wouldn’t have

that. We weren’t allowed to live in the same house unless it was in servant’s

quarters. And so we did, we lived in the servant’s quarters of the house. We were

very, you know, it -- it was just another form of breaking the spirit. But we made the

best of it, my folks did really very, very well in -- in adjusting to the new life. My

father opened an office in Breslau and immediately had a fairly sizable practice --

practice. And things were moving along. Not well, but they were moving along.

End of Tape One, Side A

Beginning Tape One, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer

collection interview with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number one, side B. Before

we go into talking more about Berlin, let’s finish up with some of your memories of

Ratibor. Can you tell me a little bit about your friends there?

A: I was very fortunate to have friends both Jewish and non-Jewish and we did a lot

of visiting back and forth to each other’s homes, although always with an

appointment, it wasn’t a natural going back and forth the way we have, or at least

our children had it when they were growing up. It was an appointment made and the

nanny was on hand and it was supervised play. For example, every Sunday my




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friend Maya Furlish and I had a date, it was every Sunday, it was at the home

where the nanny wasn’t on duty for the weekend. And we always had the same

meal, it was always hot dogs with potato salad, and either vanilla pudding with

chocolate sauce, or chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce. That was the given menu

and we had wonderful times together. Maya had an older brother. Maya and her

family moved to Israel early on. Her father was a veterinarian and he went to Israel

and was in charge of the chicken farms all over the country. And they were very

happy to have him there. Her brother joined the army and stayed i-in the permanent

army of the Israel force. Changed his name from Evian Furlish to Ari Rohn. Maya

s -- kept her name, she married some a -- a -- an attorney by the name of Kolhana,

who unfortunately passed away, and then she remarried a man from her own

settlement, which was [indecipherable] and they both live in Haifa with all their

children and grandchildren and I still am in touch with Maya, we write often, more

so now that we have email. And we have visited back and forth a number of times,

she coming here and we fortunate enough to be able to travel to Israel. At the birth -

-

Q: Wh-When did they leave to go to Israel?

A: They left in 1937, and it was a -- a good time because they were able to take

things with them and they were i-immediately very well accepted, built a home and




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have lived there very well since. And my parents also went to visit them and the old

ties are very strong in our chil -- in -- in ourselves. Our children don’t know each

other too well, although two of my three kids have visited in Israel and stayed with

her, so in a way it goes on. The -- there were many other young people who -- with

whom I grew up. Many -- several of them went to Israel, one was Epstein, Rutal

Epstein who went to Israel and has made a good life for herself, i-is still living

there now, I have not kept up with -- with her, but hear about her, occasionally. Vera

Marcus came to the United States with her family and lived in New York. Laura

Mamlock, daughter of the ear, nose and throat Dr. Mamlock also came to the

United States and my parents were in touch with the Mamlocks for many -- for

many years.

Q: Wh-When you say these people left, do you remember specifically when -- all

this time --

A: I think that they left in 1937 -- ’38. ’37 or ’38, and they were very fortunate,

those two families, of being able to get into the United States. I don’t think anybody

else was. No one of my -- that -- whom I know, I don’t think anyone made it into

Canada. Canada had a very tight immigration policy and only allowed physicians

and farmers in and once they got here, they gave them a pretty hard time. The

farmers were settled immediately, the doctors were kept from working, so -- but




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may-maybe more of this later. Other friends were the Baums, Dr. Baum went to

Israel, he was a pediatrician and his children and grandchildren are in Israel now.

His son, unfortunately lost an arm in the 1948 war. And the whereabouts of several

other people, I really don’t know. I know that my dear friend Ilse Meyer -- Mayer --

Meyer didn’t make it, nor did Yurachem -- forgotten his name at the moment, his

first name was Yurachem, but he di -- he also -- Yurachem Vaber did not make it.

And I have seen the fact that they did not make it in the files of the -- of the Yad

Vashem database. And many of the teachers that I had also, unfortunately were

unable to -- to escape. But Ratibor was a nice little city to grow up in, it was a

charming town, winter was wonderful, we had snow and skating. We had a pond in

the middle of the town and it froze in the winter, and the entire li-little town was

there skating. In the summer my father took a boat and rode us all around in the

boat. It was -- it was a good time, it was a nice time for -- for only a short period of

time though, unfortunately.

Q: What was the first day of school like?

A: Oh, first day of school was very exciting because every child who started school

was given a cornucopia filled with candy. It’s called the Osted Tuete. It -- the

Easter cornucopia because school started in spring. And I remember my friend

Maya be -- who is a year older than I am, bringing me my cornucopia, I was still in




20

bed and she brought it to me and it was such an exciting occasion. In fact, I have

some pictures to verify the fact that it was really an occasion to be remembered. And

of course, we went to school. School was an extremely formal affair. We did not

wear uniforms, but we were very regimented. We had 42 children in a class of --

with one teacher. And school was from eight in the morning until one o’clock and

then we were through. We all brought our little lunch in lunchboxes that were hung

around our necks, sort of second breakfasts, my mother called them. And then we

had -- when we got home after one o’clock it was dinner, dinnertime. And the

curriculum when we started included of course, the usual reading, writing and

arithmetic. But it also included art and music and gym, and religious studies. And to

that end Halpy Befelt was my religious teacher, and I st-still have the Bible books

that I used, written in German, of course. And once or twice a week he came, not to

the school itself, but to a building close to the school, and we all walked over and

took our studies while the catechism was being taught to the Catholic children in the

si -- in the class. I think boys and girls were separate in school, I’m pri -- I’m sure

they were, but to religious school we all went together.

Q: Did you experience ana -- any anti-Semitism from any of the other children at the

school, or any of the non-Jewish teachers?




21

A: Yes. I think one of the eye opening experiences to me was when an in -- an

inkwell was thrown at me. And I think I was terrified. It was by one of the other

children. That frightened me. The other thing that really upset me was the fact that

we had row monitors who were supposed to take care of people not speaking or

misbehaving, and if they did talk to anybody or in any way misbehave, the name

was given to the teacher. And I remember getting more sh -- of my shares of -- of --

of censure to talking or misbehaving than I really should have gotten. And of course

the result was that there was a stick that was used and was really -- we rece -- I

received a whipping on both my hands every time I was unget zeigt, which meant,

pointed out. And that I think kind of really ma -- discouraged me. And somehow the

teachers, I don’t know, they turned their backs on these things. For what reason, I

don’t know. For example, when we walked down the street, we -- and we had to wa

-- we saw a teacher, the -- the way to acknowledge it was to raise one’s hand and to

say, heil Hitler. I couldn’t do it and my parents absolutely forbade me to do it, and

so I just curtsied. And the teacher, instead of acknowledging the curtsy, would look

the other way. But of course, she didn’t do anything to -- to upset me, but it was that

-- but in itself was upsetting to be looked over and not acknowledged. And so it was

with most of the teachers. I think that they were being threatened and -- and we were

being threatened in a way, too. That was a hard time.




22

Q: Were there pictures of Hitler in the classroom?

A: I don’t remember. I really don’t remember, but picture or not, he was there in --

you know, in -- just in so many little, small details. For example, there was every

week or so, the pot was po -- passed around for money for Wintahilfe. Winter help

for meals for -- for indigent people or money being raised for unusual causes, and

you realized, of course, that the causes were the party, but you had to give. So that

was another somewhat humiliating experience. But the fact that the teacher believed

the children who -- whose hate was really being taught at home, and who took it out

on -- on us, that was -- that was unpardonable.

Q: Wa-Was this something you talked about with the other -- your other Jewish

friends? Did you ever talk about such things?

A: You know, I don’t remember that. I remember talking to my parents about it, but

I don’t remember talking to other children about it.

Q: And what would your parents say?

A: I don’t -- I real -- I just don’t remember. I don’t remember. All I know is I have

some pictures in my picture album in which I’ve got hanky in hand, and I remember

the incidents, telling my mother and she was deeply, deeply unhappy. And you

know, I think what I’ve learned, and I’ve -- it’s been with me all my life is, I don’t




23

want to make my parents unhappy. And so rather than make them unhappy, I

wouldn’t.

Q: Would you describe yourself as a very independent child?

A: Yes, I think so. I think so. I was fairly independent. I wasn’t a very good student,

I was a very average student. And according to my report cards, all of which I have

from Germany, I was not very artistic either. Music was better than art, I think.

Q: We-Were you athletic?

A: No. I don’t think so, but I did exercise well. I mean, I -- I was not athletic, but I

was flexible and -- and I enjoyed games. But athletic per se, I don’t think so. I don’t

think I was ever very athletic, although I did play basketball on my high school

team, and in college. But that was only because I’m very tall for a woman.

Q: Did you as -- during that young childhood have any hobbies, or things that you

liked to do, like reading? Anything outside of school?

A: I loved to draw, and I liked to do handwork and my grandmother taught me how

to crochet. And -- and I liked -- y-yes, I -- I -- I did like that very much. I liked to

sing and my mother and I sang a lot together. And to this day I -- I recall with much

pleasure the children’s folk songs that we -- we sang together.

Q: Can you sing a little bit of any one of the songs?




24

A: I probably can, let me think of one. [sings in German]. I should bring my book

up from downstairs where I have all of the songs. Just off the top of my head? Let

me think a little bit.

Q: Okay.

A: I’ll go into song later.

Q: Okay. And so you said you had the Jewish instruction once a week and so forth,

yeah, yeah. Well, se -- speaking about singing and music --

A: The Jewish instruction did not at this point in time, include Hebrew. It was

Biblical stories mostly and the Hebrew came later, unfortunately. I wish it had come

at -- at much earlier age because I was at a tremendous disadvantage when I changed

schools, not having had early Hebrew training.

Q: When you changed schools to Berlin, is that what you mean?

A: Yes, when I changed schools to Berlin and particularly to Breslau, everyone was

able to read Hebrew quite fluently, and I was struggling terribly with it. And I really

think to this day, I really struggle with Hebrew. I have learned French easily, of

course the German and the English no problem, but with Hebrew, to this day I

struggle. And I wonder how much this is a little resistance on my part. Not willing,

mind you, but sort of subconscious.




25

Q: Mm-hm. Is -- yo-you had started to sing a song and I was saying something about

music, and did you have any experience with the Jewish orchestra, the Kulturbund?

A: Of course I didn’t, I was too young, but in -- in Ratibor, for a -- a -- quite a while

we were allowed to go to theater -- to the theater and to the movies, and to musical

events. But the last one that -- the last cinema that I saw was in 1936 at the time of

the Olympics. And after that we were not allowed to go to the movie theater any

more. And I think it was after that ti -- point in time that the Kubu -- the

Kulturbund came and did its outreach program to the smaller cities and towns and

brought wonderful people to sing and to play and so on. One was, for example,

Alexander Kipnis, who came. And I remember my father, who was very active in

these circles, getting all dressed up, I think it was tails. And my mother in her very

finest. And it was an evening of Alexander Kipnis. I remember this very well. And

there must have been other occasions when the Kubu came down, but this -- this is

the one that stands out in my mind. Also my father, who was a cigar smoker and a

pipe smoker -- apparently before the performance there was a dinner and I think he

pulled out his cigar and Alexander Kipnis made some very unpleasant remarks

about people who smoke. It sticks out in my mind.

Q: Where did this concert take place?




26

A: The concert was actually in the social hall of the synagogue and the synagogue

must have been an old church that was taken over by the Jewish community. I

remember it very lovingly, my father sat downstairs. My mother, who sang in the

choir sat upstairs and I was allowed to sit with my mother. Mother was not only a

member of the choir, but did the solo work for Yizker service and sang just very,

very beautifully. On the side of the synagogue was a little courtyard and nice things

went on including, in my memory, wonderful Sukkoth that was built each year with

tables laden with fruits and vegetables and goodies to eat. And lovely decorations

from a roof that was made of greens, and it was just such a delightful time for the

children. We also had -- I guess it was like a club, but I can’t -- I can’t be a hundred

percent sure, but I know that I -- one Sunday I guess it was, we made lead

candlesticks for ourselves. Very tiny lead candlesticks, we were allowed -- they had

some forms and I guess they poured the lead and each child went home with two

candlesticks. They were big enough to take maybe a birthday candle, but it was so

special and I still have them, and my granddaughter now has them. So they’ve come

a long way and they were very dear. But a lot went on in the synagogue because of

the social hall. In fact, plays were given and there were readings and lectures came.

And all this happened in the social hall of the synagogue, which was pretty much in

the downtown area of Ratibor, and Ratibor was a pretty little town, not far from the




27

synagogue for example, was the marketplace. And I know that my mother went

marketing many times during the week because of course we didn’t have a

refrigerator, we only had an icebox. And so she went marketing. But besides getting

fish and vegetables and things like that, they also had pottery, and it was called

[speaks German]. And they were wonderful pottery shapes and today, when you go

into Pier One, sometimes you can see pottery made in Poland. It’s blue and white

usually, and a very nice, repetitive, simple design, a repeat design on the pottery.

And very charming, very attractive. It hasn’t changed a whole lot since then. I kind

of -- I think it’s very lovely and I recall going to potter’s market with -- with my

mother.

Q: What was the name of the synagogue and do you know the -- where it was

located?

A: I do not know the name. I could draw it on a map, where it was located. I don’t

know the name of the street, but I do know it was on the corner of the place where

the Marcus Furniture store was and the st-story about the Marcus’s -- and that was

my friend Vera Marcus’s family, story I remember very best was a party at their

house. A most unusual party. It was a party that celebrated the safe arrival of an

electric refrigerator from the United States of America that had a light in it. I

remember the children going to the refrigerator, trying the doors, trying to sneak in




28

to see who it was who was opening and closing the lights. And so much joy and so

much merriment. It was just a -- an unforgettable evening. And --

Q: What -- what did you know about the United States as a young child? Did you

have any idea of what it represented to you?

A: I don’t know whether it was at this point in time or whether it was a little bit later

because at this point I was what, seven or eight years old, but my greatest fear of

perhaps coming to the United States or Canada was I was so afraid of the wolves.

Four legged ones. I was petrified to think that I was going to have to live in log

cabin with ice and snow all around and the wolves in the neighborhood. It was kind

of frightening, but I think the nicest, nicest story that my father told me, and I’ll

remember to this day is, dear, he said, we’re going to a land where even a Jew can

become a person in the government. And of course he was talking about Bernard

Baruch. And I’m still a -- you can see, I’m still emotionally very touched by that. It

must have been a little bit later than living in Breslau, but it was -- it was certainly --

you asked me about what I knew about America? Not a whole lot.

Q: Did you ever hear any of the speeches on the r -- di -- on the radio that Hitler

made, and if so, as a child, what did that do to you?

A: I do remember hearing the speeches on the radio, on -- on -- and the yelling, and

not really ever being able -- to this day I can’t follow the words, they were so




29

garbled and mispronounced. But the tone of voice was so grating and the sheer

shouts of adulation and adoration were frightening in themselves. And I recall my

father saying that he had heard, and I’m sure this is so, everybody in the audience

felt the fuehrer was looking into his eyes. One was a -- a person was standing there,

one in 10,000 but each one felt that he had been individually touched by this, you

must say, charismatic character. It was frightening and the music was frightening

too. The -- the -- the marching music and the boots, the boots, the boots. The beat of

the boots, oh, very frightening.

Q: You had spoken about one parade. Were there many parades in Ratibor while

you were there?

A: There were a number, I wouldn’t say many, because we left before there were

many, but there were quite a number that I recall. I even recall the night that there

was a fire in a building not too far away from us and it was always a question as to

why the fire. Was it a set fire because there were Jews living in that building, or was

it a Christmas three that -- it was on Christmas -- whether it was a Christmas tree

that was responsible for it. I don’t think anybody ever knew, but I associate that

picture along also with the marching, the marching, the beat. It may not have

happened at the same time, but in my memory was very -- it must have been very

close together. And of course the -- the birthdays that were always celebrated,




30

Hitler’s birthday and other notable occasions. And then there were always special

parades.

Q: What -- what would you do on Hitler’s birthday?

A: We would stay at home. We would not go out. It was not worthwhile

jeopardizing oneself. And still we -- there in -- in Silesia were so much better off, I

think, than people in the other parts of Germany. It was a little bit later in coming to

us. It was as severe, but it was a little later.

Q: Were there banners, Nazi banners hanging from buildings in your town?

A: Yes. I believe that the -- the official building was -- had banners on them -- flags.

And of course you couldn’t miss them, the bright red just was like blood hanging.

That I recall. I don’t -- you ask me about pictures of Hitler in the classroom. I don’t

know. There may have been the flag, but I’m not su -- I’m really not sure. That I

don’t recall.

Q: Did you have to ha -- ever have to say heil Hitler in the classroom, to the

teacher?

A: In the classroom, I don’t remember. Oh, it must have been. It must have, but I

don’t think that -- I don’t think that I raised my arm, but I couldn't swear to that.

That I’m -- I’m a little unsure of, but I do know very well walking along the streets

and seeing my teachers, my various teachers and feeling totally hum -- not -- totally




31

upset by the experience of not being recognized. Although, they tried to be fair with

-- I think with grades. I don’t think that I was graded down in my -- in my studies.

I’m sure I wasn’t. And I think in some respects these teachers were going through so

much themselves, because usually, people who did become teachers in Germany

were very dedicated, true teachers with high ideals and high principles, but when

your life depends on it, sometimes those principles change.

End of Tape One, Side B




32

Beginning Tape Two, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

volunteer collection interview with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number two, side

A. And can you tell me about celebrating Passover in Ratibor?

A: Well, my most vivid memory of si -- Passover Seders were celebrated with my

parent’s very dear friends. The Passover with the Weisbarts are really in my

memory very frequently because they were absolutely wonderful Seders together.

The Weisbarts had a store on the -- downtown in the rink area, the rink area of the

downtown part of Ratibor. And it had all sorts of wonderful things like kitchen

equipment and things for the house and they lived above the shop in a comfortable

apartment. And just above them was a family by the name of Rechnitz. And so on

Seder evening, first night of Seder, Frau Weisbart, whose husband used to take me

to synagogue on Saturday mornings and buy me those delicious little rolls, had us

over -- I think they had no children of their own. I don’t believe -- or perhaps they

did, but at any rate, they were not there. He would conduct the service. We were all

interspersed, sitting in -- at a long table and I also remember having f -- my four

cups of wine and being a little bit out of it one year. But they had the most delicious

sidoram. The food was unbelievable and a particularly good thing was a fish

shodoe. And I cannot spell it, I don’t know how to tell you about it, but it was fluffy




33

and it was lemony and it had fish in it and it was wonderful. And there were children

around the table, and -- and a family by the name of Rechnitz, and it was a long

evening, but always one that was a very, very happy one. I think I remember two

years that we were there, and I’m sure there were more years than that. What I think

is particularly interesting, my husband is very interested in Jewish genealogy and I

bring this in because it really does relate. There was a request about people who

knew people in Ratibor and in that general area of Upper Silesia and I answered it

and I said yes, I do know the area, and immediately a response came, would you

happen to know a -- I’m looking for the name Rechnitz. And it came from

somebody who was originally in Shanghai. This was a Jewish family who went,

instead of going west went east and found refuge in Shanghai, lived out the war

years in Shanghai and then came to the United States. And the name of the lady

who made the request was Yvonne Adler. And I said, this is very, very strange. I

said, I saw a Mrs. Adler present almost every day when O.J. Simpson trials were

carried on. And they sometimes interviewed her, would you be the same one? She

said yes, that was me. So she wanted to know about Rechnitz, and I said yes. And

she said, I have no knowledge of their whereabouts. I said, I can tell you nothing

perhaps of the mother and father, but the two daughters survived and are living in

Israel. She was delighted, needless to say. So then a little later a letter came. She




34

said, you know, I have a relative who lives in Rockville. Is that close to Potomac? I

said yes, I think within, sort of, walking distance. And so we met in the relatives,

and had them over for a cup of coffee and enjoyed meeting them. And in between,

every now and again, we still get on the genealogy line and a -- express a word of

greeting at Passover time, and just to stay little bit in touch. But it all revolved

around the pass -- that Passover table. And I was able to fill a -- in a little bit on her

family tree, and likewise she was able to fill in a little bit of my family tree, because

a distant cousin of my father’s was an editor of the Jewish newspaper in Shanghai

during the years of the second World War. He was an editor in Breslau, made a trip

and stayed in Shanghai, lived out the years in Shanghai and apparently moved to

Israel and unfortunately died there before we could make contact. But she was able

to help us out in that part of our family tree, so the internet’s a great thing.

Q: And what was his name, the gentleman who was the editor?

A: Let me think. I have it, but it’s -- it’s not coming through [indecipherable].

Q: All right. W-We can come back to it later, it’s okay.

A: Mm-hm. [indecipherable]

Q: Did your family take vacations?

A: Yes. And I’ve -- I have several memorable vacations. My father and mother were

great hikers and they loved to hike in the mountains and so very frequently we went




35

up to the Tetras, and the Riesengebirge and walked and enjoyed the fresh air. I

have happy memories of being put into a sled driven by horses and being pulled

through deep snow, and staying at a lodge, and enjoying the -- the winter activities.

Mostly -- it mostly was walking. But -- and this was all very well and good, we

could go and do our vacations, go on our vacations and stay at the lodges, or at the

hotels, but a time came when they were taking no more Jewish visitors and so the

vacation places were somewhat rationed and we had to go to places that were Jewish

-- run by Jewish families for Jewish families and that’s where we went on vacation.

And I remember going up to Swinemünde, which is on the Baltic, where there was

a very lovely vacation spot that catered to the Jewish trade. Was called the Möve.

And the Möve is a seagull and it was on -- on the water, and we went. I stayed one

year with my grandmother and one year I think I went with my mother. Yes, I

remember going with my mother, because I had to do homework, so not to fall

behind. And the German school year was a little bit different, but I was allowed to --

to miss a little time, as long as my mother kept up with the assignments with me. But

it was interesting to think that we were really isolated even in where we could spend

vacation time. Swinemünde was rather fri -- to me was a little bit of a frightening

place to be because the lodge where I stayed with my grandmother sat opposite of

Peenemünde. And that’s where the Germans were building their U-boats and we




36

could see the white boats in the harbor, across the water. And we were well aware of

the fact that in 1937, there were definite attempts at getting ready for a war. And I --

I still see in my mind’s eye the white -- the very white painted ships against very

gray waters. And rather frightening looking, they looked like sharks.

Q: Wow, mm-hm. Anything else in Ratibor that you wanted to talk about?

A: There was a very -- in Ratibor was a very nice municipal swimming pool, and I

was given my first instructions to swimming at that pool, I was five years old and it

was a funny way of learning how to swim. There were ro -- there were L-shaped

rods -- well, actually probably fairly stable pipes that had ropes on them, that were

suspended over the water, and we were hooked onto these ropes, and were in a very

safe place to study our strokes. And I -- I learned how to swim that way, I became a

very good swimmer, very fast. And I remember it was a miserable day and I was

about to take my test to pass to get my first card, and it required 15 minutes of

uninterrupted swimming around the pool, the edge of the pool. And as I say, it was a

dreary day, but my grandmother was visiting and she took me to the pool. And I

passed, I even did 20 minutes, but in order to get your card you had to jump in at the

far end, into the deep water. This I could not do. I was a totally petrified creature.

But they said well, if you will jump, if we put you on the harness and the rope, we

will let you pass. And of course I did, and I got my certificate and I was the happiest




37

person in the world. But then that was closed to Jews after we left. It was no longer

allowed for Jewish people to -- to swim there. But at least I learned how to swim.

Q: So then you went off to Berlin while your parents settled -- were getting settled,

and you were with your grandmother. And how long did you stay in Berlin?

A: Actually, I think I probably was there less time than in my imagination. I was

there a matter of maybe six months. But I was so lonely, and my grandmother tried

to make it so pleasant and comfortable for me, but I was away from my parents and I

was very unhappy. I went to a school where I didn’t know anybody. It was a Jewish

school and I didn’t know Hebrew and all the children knew Hebrew. I was

devastated. However, the period came to an end and I saw a little bit of Berlin. I

don’t remember very much of it, I remember where my grandmother lived, I

remember where the beautiful synagogue was at which Dr. Joachim Prince was the

-- the m -- the rabbi. I remember going to a service there. I re -- I remember going to

the zoo and to -- doing things that little children like to do, but in general I have a

very, very limited memory of what went on there, as opposed to the very accurate

memory I have of Ratibor, where I c -- I can draw a map and I drew a map for my

father some years back when -- and asked him whether he could go over this map

with me to see whether my memory was accurate, and he said absolutely. The

memory of the street where the dentist was, and where the knit shop was and where




38

the market was and so on and so forth. But my memory of Berlin is not at all that

good. However, when I moved back to be with my family in Breslau, when I came

back to Breslau, I have a much better memory of that place.

Q: When you were in Berlin, did you see lots of evidence of Nazi party symbols?

A: Actually, I don’t even remember that. I think there must have been -- there must

have been, but I cannot visually pinpoint it as to where I might have seen it. My

grandmother, I am sure took me only to places that were permitted. It was

interesting, my uncle, my mother’s younger brother went to Israel. He wanted very

much to emigrate to Israel and in 1935 or th -- ’36, he went to Israel and had a

marvelous experience and wanted very, very much to go and settle there. He saw the

handwriting on the wall and he wanted -- he had a chance to buy into Egged, the bus

company. And my grandmother did not want to leave Berlin and she would not give

him the money, although it was there in spades. The consequence was that Ludz did

not go to Israel, had a terrible time leaving Germany, and my grandmother didn’t

make it at all. There was a wonderful opportunity where the wrong turn was taken.

You ask did I see much evidence? I just really honestly cannot recall. Mm, I can’t.

Q: Did your parents come visit you in Berlin while you were there?

A: I don’t have memories of my parents visiting me at all because they were in the

throes of moving and setting up a practice and trying to start getting things ready for




39

a possible chance to -- to emigrate. My mother was very reluctant to emigrate. She

wanted more than -- she was sure this was all going to blow over. My father knew

better, or he -- he did indeed know better. He was sure that it wouldn’t and so at that

point they were putting feelers out to see what might happen and what ha -- in effect

happened was my father, being a physician was contacted by a number of countries

in South America who were opening their doors to physicians particularly. And it

was either Uruguay or Paraguay, and I’m sh -- not sure that I remember, but one of

the -- one of those two countries that made a most attractive offer, but my father, not

Spanish speaking, not having had too much contact with the Spanish speaking

population decided that might not be for him. He also did not want to go to Israel, I

might add. He was not at all set on going to Israel. But in the meantime, this

wonderful telegram showed up, the one that really saved us when we were able to

establish a family -- a blood connection to someone who lived in Canada. The

question is, could we get into Canada, because Canada had a very tight quota. You

might know the -- the book, 6,000 is too many and indeed I don’t even think that

they got 6,000, or allowed 6,000 in. But an -- at any rate, perhaps this is not what I --

what I should be -- yeah. So my father turned down Uruguay or Paraguay, turned

down Israel, but was absolutely positive that we had to leave. And so my mother

decided she better learn how to do something. And so my mother, who was a singer




40

and a lady who entertained beautifully and who was a -- a homemaker at heart

decided that she would study and did study under ORT auspices, and studied

physiotherapy. She had always loved a -- gym and exercise and physical culture and

so on. Right up her alley, and she, in Breslau went to school and studied

physiotherapy. And really, in effect, this step did keep body and soul together once

we did come to Canada. And she loved what she was doing, and she did it for many

-- well, for a number of years. So that was while I was in Berlin, she also started on

that and got -- got into class and worked.

Q: And this is the Jewish Organization for Rehabilitation and Training. You said

your father did not want to go to Israel. Were your parents Zionists in any way?

A: My parents were not Zionists. You know, in Germany there was the big schism,

the blue and white and the black and white. He did not belong to the blue and white,

although that changed too. I mean, he was the strongest supporter of Israel that

anybody could wish for, but at the time of our move he thought he could not take the

weather in Israel. That was why.

Q: Y-You said he was a psychiatrist. He obvious -- he had an adult clientele. Did he

have any kind of more of a specialty or just general psychiatry?

A: Actually, when he went to school, and he went to school at the university in

Breslau after he came back from the war, he studied neu-neurology and psychiatry,




41

that was a -- a study that always went hand in hand. And then he went for

specialized work to Munich and studied in Munich for awhile before he actually

went into practice. He dealt mostly with adult patients and he did some very early

work on mescaline, which became a drug a -- that was used for, I believe

recreational, but it was a -- a very potent drug and he wrote one of the first papers on

mescaline. And he also dealt with bromism, which I’m not sure I really understand.

And then he got very interested and very involved with electric shock therapy, and

was exceedingly successful with electroshock until it was sort of downplayed, and

was not used any more. And now things have come back and they are using electric

shock therapy, under perhaps better circumstances because of the muscle relaxants

and things that go with it. But my father was exceedingly successful. I always felt he

was out of favor with the establishment because his basis, from the earliest of all

times he said, we will find biochemical and biologic basis for mental problems and

diseases of the mind. And of course when Freud became so popular, he was not at

all in the swing. And he stuck to his guns and I think the world has changed. He was

more of a Jungian. He was extremely interested in what Jung had to tell us. And he

really felt, and I think he was -- h-he -- it -- it came to pass that his way of thinking

was quite right, quite on the ball. And he worked until he was -- worked in his

profession until he was 80 years old. And at that point in time he felt he couldn’t




42

keep up with all the new medications and then decided that this was -- this was not,

you know, good for the patient. But he was quite successful in his -- in his work and

he loved every minute of it. He was the sort of person who, if somebody in the

province, in New Brunswick when we came to Canada, was ill and needed his

help, he got into his car and drove 300 miles without batting an eye. If the patient

needed him, he was there. He made housecalls.

Q: That is some kind of a housecall.

A: Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, yes.

Q: All right, now you’re finished being in Berlin, you’re back with your family in

Breslau, and how long did you stay there?

A: I would say probably only a year. It was a very full year though, because I had to

get used to a new school and new surroundings. I lived fairly far away from the

school, the na -- [tape break]

Q: We were talking about your full year in Berlin.

A: I --

Q: I mean in Breslau [indecipherable]

A: Ah yes, I moved back to Breslau and I was started in the Jewish school in

Breslau, Raydia ar -- school and all children there were Jewish. All, or most

everyone was trying to leave and -- and I think everybody’s mind was such that --




43

that we were il -- we were losing people every day in school. I went to Raydia

shula, it was a Jewish school. It was a sizeable Jewish school, much bigger than my

school in Ratibor, certainly ba -- much bigger than the one in Berlin, which was a

small, little independent school. This was a large school, and almost all the children

there were being prepared, really, to leave the country. Hebrew was very big in the

curriculum and I was painfully inadequate. I did not like the school. I only made two

friends while I was in school and it was -- it was a very unhappy time of my life. My

father started his new practice and my grandmother -- my grandmother was having

to rent out more rooms so that things would go reasonably well. She was made to

give up the store at the point of a gun. This beautiful store, this beautiful toy shop,

the biggest one in the entire province of Siles -- of Silesia, where people came from

all over to buy. In fact, the people who had the guta, the large farms, these enormous

farms would bring their families in at Christmastime to do their shopping at Garson

Frankel. That was the name of the store, was the name actually of my great-

grandfather. The store had been in the family since 1826 and my grandmother was

running it with her sister because both had lost their husbands, and they were made

to sell it, as I say, because it was taken over. And I even have a clipping to the effect

that it’s now Aryan, a big clipping from the newspaper. So she took in borders into

her big, beautiful home and everybody got along very well. But it was not as it was




44

before. Still, she was able to have help in the house because help was still allowed to

work. It was later that the help was not allowed to work for Jewish people any more,

but at that time, in that place, there was help.

Q: Were the borders Jewish?

A: I believe they were. I do believe they were. The house was one, two -- four

stories high and the lowest part had the servant quarters of the gardener, which

became our apartment. It was on the lowest level, the entry level and there were

lovely shrubs around it. I remember there were lilacs that smelled so beautifully, and

Lilies of the Valley. Had a large iron gate that opened up to allow cars to move in.

We di -- she did not -- we did not have a car. My father had his motorcycle, never

drove a car until he came to Canada. And then there was the rote deala. That was a

red foyer where when people came to visit, left their coats before being shown

upstairs. And that was, of course, my favorite place to play because everything was

so beautiful. Red satin or velvet or plush, very beautiful, with a bay window looking

out into the shrubs. And then the back or side part of it had a huge kitchen. It was

not a kitchen for cooking though, it was an area to do the laundry. And every week

the laundresses came in and that was always great fun for me because they would

hand wash everything on boards and then they would rinse it and then dry them, and

then at the end of the day the two of them would take the sheets, one standing at one




45

end, one at the other and they would pull them in order to dry them completely and

my greatest joy was to stand underneath in the middle and have my hair fly up into

the sheets. It was such a joy and it was so much fun. That was so much fun. We had

a lovely gardener who took care of the garden, which had a walk all around it so that

one could stroll around a central green area. And then the borders were all peonies

and roses and lovely shade flowers and tall trees. And then there was a small garden

arch that led into the fruits and vegetable gardens. And we had gooseberries. Never

see gooseberries any more. And red and white currants and raspberries and apple

trees and peach trees. It was -- it was a paradise, it was absolutely lovely, and the

gardener worked hard to do -- to keep it so. And the back of the house had an

enormous balcony so that one could sit in the balcony and then look down on this

lovely green area and then into the distance where the fruit trees were.

End of Tape Two, Side A

Beginning Tape Two, Side B


volunteer collection interview with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number two, side

B. Cou -- let’s start talking about the actions that your father took to try to get the

family ou-out of Germany.




46

A: Once my grandmother was found and was able to establish contact with a distant

relative who had emigrated to Canada much earlier, and I wish I could tell you

exactly when, I don’t ec -- but, at any rate, he was a blood relative and action was

taken to try to contact him and see whether he could, in any way help out. His

response was immediate and he said he could, of course try to help out but not

monetarily because it was in the late 30’s and Canada was still reeling, as the

States, I know must have been after the depression, and really no one had much of

anything. He -- Uncle Charlie, his name was Charlie Redlish, had established a

small institute where he treated alcoholics. And it was very small and he ran it by

himself with one nurse. But he apparently was successful enough, but I don’t think

was getting paid exceedingly well because he and his wife and his married daughter

and unmarried daughter, all -- an-and son and his wife all had to live together in one

flat just to be able to make it. But he was instrumental in getting things going and

very fortunately, his daughter Fay Redlish had a friend who was extremely well-to-

do. He was in the manufacturing business of men’s suits, and at the time just before

the war, was starting to get contracts for army uniforms, and apparently had an in

politically speaking. And Jack took it upon himself, and I think I’m right in saying

this, that he went up to Ottawa to see whether there was some way of expediting

bringing us into Canada. Well, Canada had the law, of course, that only farmers




47

and physicians could come in, and the other law, the law stated that they, if after a

year’s time, the person could not make it on their own in Canada, they would be

sent back. So it was a trial run, so to speak. In addition to fulfilling that, the person

also had to bring 3200 dollars with them, which at that point in time I guess must

have been a fair amount of money. And it took many months to actually get the

permission to come, and once the permission was granted there was an awful lot to

go through as far as the Canadian authorities were concerned, but as far as the

German authorities were concerned. Because they were on our tails constantly about

signing this paper and that paper. And during that period of time, many people were

called to the police stations and never returned. This was a time in ’36 - ’37, when

people were called on unbelievably small details to their leaving and to their lives,

they were called, and they were made to jump off buildings. And this happened

indeed, to friends of ours. Well, I think I can tell you, one day my father was called.

We were trembling, I think all day long, but he was one of the lucky ones. He signed

whatever he needed to sign and pay whatever he needed to pay and he came back. In

the meantime we were granted permission and a van was ordered to pack up our

things. And I think it’s interesting to mention that we were allowed to bring things

with us that had been -- that were old things. So my grandmother suggested that we

take her furniture because that could be certified as being old. I don’t know how -- I




48

-- I know it was 10 years on suits because my father had to go to his tailor and tell

him to put labels into his suits which indicated when they were made, and he did.

But the van was -- as I say, was ordered and some of the old pieces were packed and

-- and put in, but nothing of their modern furniture could come with them, it -- it was

only the old things, which -- which was fine. But when we were packing -- and my

father ha-had a terrific library, and a wonderful stamp collection, and when the

actual packing took place, the Nazi, with their guns came, and they stood over us as

we were doing the packing. And I remember very, very well, we were in our little

downstairs gardener’s apartment with lots and lots of boxes on the floor, these two

men with guns watching as my father packed all the books. And whenever they liked

a book -- an they particularly liked my children’s books, they just helped

themselves. And they helped themselves to some of my father’s stamps too, and

there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. And I remember my father putting his

hand to his mouth and saying shh. It was just, that’s the way it was done. Well, he

still came over with a lot of books and I did come over with some children’s books,

but I think my best ones didn’t come with me. That’s all right. But it was just, you

know, the situation. Also, for example, it’s interesting; in that same apartment where

we were packing the books, we were also taking our food, because we were not

allowed to eat with our grandmother upstairs. We had to eat separately. I mean, the




49

little downstairs apartment was like an independently organized apartment. They

were allowed to bring the food down to us, but we couldn’t eat it together with them

upstairs. All the boarders could eat upstairs and my grandmother could eat upstairs,

but we couldn’t, and we had to eat downstairs.

Q: How would your family know this rule, this regulation that you couldn’t eat

upstairs? How were you told?

A: Oh, you know, that I don’t remember. I don’t recall, but there would be -- day

after day there would be leaflets left on th-the doorstep and people were checking

up. So, I assume it must have been through those leaflets. Otherwise I -- I can’t

imagine. But there were people always coming by and always checking up.

Q: What about your going outside to play with friends?

A: I didn’t go out to play at all. I went to school, but I rode my bicycle on the side of

the street. I took a streetcar to school and I remember having to actually change

places on Victoriastrassen and -- into another streetcar and that seemed to be safe

enough. I don’t remember having friends when I was in Breslau at all, because I

was hardly there long enough and people -- there wasn’t that nice easy going back

and forth to houses as there is in America, it just wasn’t there. And surely not at that

point in time. I only had -- I only made two friends while I was in Breslau. I wasn’t

there that long, I guess, and the times were just not conducive.




50

Q: When you would see a Nazi officer in uniform, do you d -- do you remember any

visceral effects it had on you?

A: You know, I must say I don’t. Again, I don’t remember, other than seeing them in

groups. And yes, I was scared, terribly scared because of what I remembered from

Ratibor. But I -- either I was held away from being put into that situation or it

perhaps just didn’t register. I don’t know. I don’t know. I remember in Breslau it

was not a time to go to the movie theater, because we couldn’t. It was not a time to

go to a concert because we couldn’t. And I think everything was in the home. There

wasn’t much of that either. I think the times were so desperate. My mother went to

class and came home. But I have to add this, because this I think is very important.

My parents both decided it was -- would be good if they took English lessons. And

so they found out that there was a man, an Englishman who was settled in Breslau,

who was giving lessons to people who were leaving the country. My parents decided

to also study English, as many of their friends were, a-and they went to the home of

somebody who had come from England and who was doing something other than

giving English lessons. But he gave English lessons on the side, and he gave them in

the evening, and my parents decided to take them. And first they walked into his

home, and he’s -- they were sitting at his desk, he with his back to a huge picture of

Mr. Moseby. And who is Mr. Moseby? He was the Nazi of England. He was the




51

emissary there. Well, my mother and father said, we’ve got to learn English, we’ve

got to face Moseby, and they went ahead and did and just disliked the occasion

terribly but liked their teacher. Their teacher was a very good teacher and a very nice

person. So they never could understand why Moseby was there, but he was there.

Q: So th-th -- you said they continued with their English lessons.

A: Yes, they took their English lessons and they did rather well and at least got a

little bit of a foundation and developed their hearing skills and along with taking the

-- along with taking the ORT group, my father also learned how to concoct beauty

preparations. He learned how to make cold creams and vanishing creams and

moisturizing creams and all sorts of things practical. And this stood us in very good

stead, actually. And he bought jars, beautifully designed jars and labels for the jars,

so -- in English -- so that they could be at -- affixed to the jars that perhaps might be

of -- of use on immi -- on immigration. So that was a time when you asked what did

people do, my parents were very busy, taking classes and doing very practical

things.

Q: Did you know they were preparing to leave?

A: I knew, yes. I knew that we were going to leave. When my mother -- when my

father finally persuaded my mother that we had no alternative, she came around to it

and of course I knew, because of the papers that needed signing and the




52

documentation that needed to be gotten and the visits to ready ourselves, yes. And of

course, when the furniture was being packed, I think it was very clear. It was very --

a very difficult time for my grandmother, because unfortunately we could not bring

her with us. The Canadian government put an age limit on those whom they would

permit. And of course, she was not a trained person, either a farmer or a physician,

so she -- on her own she would not be able to go. And she could not come as a

member of the family, much to the everlasting sadness that my father went through.

He was an only child and he was very close to his mother, and I think he suffered

terribly, just the fact that she had to stay behind.

Q: What was her name?

A: Her name was Hedwig, Frankel was her maiden name, Fischer. And the store’s

name was Garson Frankel, it was her father’s and that family’s store. She was a

good business lady, she was very interested in genealogy. In fact, I’ve just put

together lots and lots of genealogic data, much of which she wrote down in German

script. And since there are not too many of us left who can still re-read German

script, I thought I’d best do that, and I’ve done it and I am so glad because it has

opened up all sorts of interesting new avenues to investigate. And unfortunately she

-- she was taken to Belzec. And you know Belzec, of course is a -- was a killing

camp. So that was her demise. I -- I [indecipherable]




53

Q: How old was she when she died?

A: Well, we’re not really quite sure, but I know that I’m older than she was when

she died. In fact, I think she must have been 60. Probably something like that. I can

look that up, I -- that I don’t know exactly. But she was the -- it -- it was so much

fun visiting her when I was a little girl because she read stories to me and she

introduced me to handwork. She did beautiful tatting and beautiful crocheting and I

still have collars that she made me, which I have put into tissue paper, and have kept

a tablecloth that she made for my mother, and just lovely handiwork.

Q: So your family was preparing to leave. Were you kind of thinking of what to take

with you, cause you know you’d be leaving your home?

A: I don’t think that I had any choice, because they could not buy things new for me,

so I had to take what I had. And for themselves they couldn’t either, so we went with

what we had, we couldn’t really prepare in that sense, at all.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Nope.

Q: So what was it like when you had to leave, for you emotionally?

A: Well, I remember taking leave from my grandmother -- my grandmother in

Berlin, we said goodbye to earlier on. When we moved to -- I think she came to visit

us and we said goodbye then. My grandmother in Breslau, with whom we stayed,




54

we said goodbye and -- and it was a very -- it was a very quiet time. And I remember

that one of the people who rented rooms from my grandmother was a pianist, and he

played one of Chopin’s etudes. And to this day, when I hear that etude, the tears

come -- welled up in -- welled up in my eyes. This -- there was not much to say. I

think we all knew that this would be the last time and we were taking leave. It was --

it was tough, very tough. I don’t remember how we got to where we went, I mean to

the station, but I know we went by train. I don’t know how we got there. We went

by train from Breslau to Hamburg and in Hamburg we had to undergo medical

checks with a Canadian doctor. And that was not a nice experience, but it was done.

My mother, who very early in her life developed glaucoma, she was in her 40’s, she

thinks that the doctor who examined her, Canadian doctor who examined her, might

have had a suspicion that there was something there, but he didn’t let on. All she

remembers is that she was forever getting her eyes examined. Now, she was an

undiagnosed glaucoma [indecipherable], so imagine if she had had the glaucoma 10

years before and they would have told her about it, she might never have gone blind.

Because she did eventually become blind. But yes, we passed our exams, our

physicals.

Q: Did they check you?

A: Yes.




55

Q: How did they do that?

A: All over. All over and then some, a little bit more than they really needed to, I

think, but I passed. And --

Q: Was your mother able to stay with you during the time?

A: Yes, yes, she was. But it was -- you know, I was a little girl, nine years old. It was

not -- it wasn’t my doctor, the one that I was used to, and being patted all over by a

strange person who was not -- whose language I didn’t understand, was not a happy

situation.

Q: What month in 1938 was this?

A: Well, I figure it must have been June, or July. June or July. My mother’s brother

came to see us off -- I mean, came to Hamburg to see us before we took our leave,

and oh well, we were hoping that we would see each other again. And we did.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But it was very iffy, because he hadn’t gotten permission to leave Germany, and

it was late 30’s -- mid-30’s.

Q: The anschluss had taken place in March of ’38, when Hitler marched into

Austria. Did you -- were you aware of that, or did your parents tell you about that?

A: Yes, they did, and they -- I could -- you know, interestingly enough, they didn’t

have to tell me. There was so much electricity in the air, just our every day routine.




56

And hearing particularly what was happening, through the maids, who went out and

did their shopping and who went and -- to church. We always were aware of what

people were thinking and what they were talking about. I think it came -- it came as

a bit of a shock, I think. But then my father -- by that time my father had already

made up his mind to go, and I think that reinforced his judgment. It was just such a

nerve-wracking time to be there. One had to watch ones P’s and Q’s so carefully.

Didn’t say anything in public, didn’t have an -- you know, even -- even when --

when you went for little walks, you’d look around and sort of make sure that nobody

was hearing your conversation. It was fraught with -- with all sorts of intangible,

unpleasant things.

Q: Did you see any violence on the street?

A: I don’t think so. I wasn’t on the street long enough, really. I -- I was fairly well

sheltered. I don’t -- that I don’t recall. But I recall the dinner conversations when so

and so was asked to come up to the Gestapo and so and so lost his business and such

and such a person was asked for extra documentation, which of course they didn’t

have. And it was -- it was just an unsure and uncertain and nerve-wracking time.

And I think my mother, who was a bit of an insomniac must have suffered terribly.

But you know, life continued and it’s amazing that it does, but it did. And bi -- after

Hamburg and having the medical exam and seeing our -- my Uncle Ludz, we were




57

put on the train and we left for -- for Holland first, on our way to England. And I

don’t remember the day that it was, but it must have been -- it was in the summer of

1938, and we were on the train from Hamburg to Hoek van Holland, which was

the port, the seaport in Holland, before getting on the little peanut boat to

Greenwich. And I remember we had second class tickets. My father had gotten

those and we were to get on the train and we were entering the second class carriage

when somebody came waving a paper. Dr. Fischer, Dr. Fischer, would you kindly

move over into the first class carriage? My father said he had second class tickets.

Yes, but it would -- it would be better if we went into the first class carriage. I

remember it so vividly, but the second class carriage had red leather seats, and first

class carriage had green velvet seats. I was dressed -- what is it, to the sevens? To

the fours?

Q: To the nines.

A: To the nines, well okay, I was very nicely dressed with while gloves. I remember

my mother slipping several rings on my fingers and telling me to keep my gloves on,

which I did. But we were ushered into this very nice carriage and sat with not too

many people, whereas the other carriage was very, very full, and we came to the

border and I know we came to the border because there was my father, knowing

exactly at what time that train was leaving Germany and getting into Holland,




58

because he was waiting to be out of the clutches. Just before the border, the stop

before the border, the train stopped. Second class carriage people left the train. We

went on without many of second class carriage people. I’ll never forget it. I will

never forget it. And my father to this day said, we were that lucky because of the

English teacher with Moseby’s picture in back. He was trying to help people out of

Germany in whatever way they could. My father said he was very interested in

knowing what trains we were taking. And really, my mother and father both, many,

many times had said, if it hadn’t been for the English teacher, we might not have

gotten out of second class carriage. So we crossed the border. I remember

everybody, we three, just hugging each other, crying and making our way over to

Hoek van Holland and getting on our little boat. My father and I got very sick

crossing the English channel. My mother, the good rider -- or sailor I should say, had

no problems whatsoever, as she did on the voyage across the Atlantic as well. And

we landed in Greenwich -- or Harwich -- Harwich. S-Sorry, Harwich I think it

was. H-a-r-w-i-c-h. Yeah, Harwich. And from there we took the train to London.

And in London my father had made arrangements for us to stay in a very nice hotel,

which we have since visited. And we stayed there and h-he had fraternity brothers in

London and his cousin was in -- no, his cousin wasn’t there yet. But the fraternity

brothers were in London and we had a few very nice days in London until about




59

three days before we were to sail to Canada, I came down with appendicitis. Had to

go to the hospital emergency. Where did they take me? To the German hospital. Had

to have my appendix removed, and fate again, fate unbelievable. I was on the

operating table, about ready to have my appendix removed when the young surgeon

who came and was about to do the job said, oh, and what’s your name and where are

you from, and said, is your father a physician? Yes. And we -- we established the

fact that my father was a physician, and he said, he helped me out in my final exam.

I told this story to my father. He said, you know, he was trying to keep calm, but

sure enough, my father slipped him some answers when he was taking his final

exam. And this was the doctor who took out my appendix. But I had to stay in

hospital for a week, I guess it is. I was very well looked after, but it was a German

hospital. And I suppose it was good that I was there because I understood what was

going on, and they understood what I -- and af -- we had to miss our boat to

Canada, and that was the difficult part.

End of Tape Two, Side B




60

Beginning Tape Three, Side A


volunteer collection interview with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number three,

side A, and you were saying because you had your appendix operation you missed

your -- the boat. Before we get to that, did you have any special toys that you

brought with you from Germany?

A: I had a lovely doll, a Katie [indecipherable] doll and something happened to her

between the -- in the last 20 years. I cannot locate her and I am desolate. Yes, mine

[indecipherable]. I certainly brought a doll with me and I don’t think I brought too

much else in way of toys. That was -- not even a Teddy bear, I don’t think so. Just a

doll.

Q: You were nine years old at the time. Also, did you -- a-and you also said the

Germans who were watching you while you were packing took some of your

children’s books. Did you have any favorite children’s books that you didn’t bring

with you?

A: I brought some fairy tales and a few stories about animals and I still have them

and look at them every now and again. There was one lovely one about an aquarium.

But I loved fairy tales. My mother always used to say [speaks German here]. I am

too much involved in play. I was always imagining, playing imaginary games of -- I




61

think my joy in life was to be a princess, to have a crown on my head and to eat

noodle soup. I -- I don’t -- I can’t think of other toys. I did bring card games. Some

games and some puzzles. And I have the card games, they were quartets and they

were quartets dealing with authors and with flowers and with comics. Very funny

comics from the newspaper, but they were in sets of fours. And also cards with

letters so that one could make Scrabble words, but all as cards. Small, small things.

But I think that’s all. Maybe a chessboard.

Q: And -- all right, you’ve now recuperated from your appendix operation? And then

what happened?

A: I recuperated, and my father of course, had to scout around to find a new -- a

voyage for us across the ocean and it was close to September and the visitors were

returning back to Canada after vacationing in Europe. It was a particularly busy

time of the year because the teachers were coming home on their trips and it was -- it

was a bit of a -- of -- of a difficulty. However, the Canadian embassy could not have

been nicer. They found my folks a place to stay because staying at a hotel was too

expensive, and they settled them in somebody’s home in Golders Green, which is a

f -- well-known Jewish community, and perhaps not so far away from the hospital

either. And they arranged, through the Jewi -- with the help of the Jewish Aid

Society in London to get us a later boat over and we came over on the Montrose,




62

which was a slightly smaller ship than we were supposed to come on, but they had

room for the three of us and we had a good voyage across the sea. At least my

mother had a good voyage. My father and I took it downstairs. We were -- he and I

were quite seasick. Not that it was such a hazardous journey at -- according to the

information that I got from pier 21, it was a rather smooth journey, but our stomachs

did not know that. My mother played ping pong onboard and we were downstairs.

Q: Were there many refugees on the bor -- on the boat?

A: No, there were not. There were -- I don’t think there were -- I -- as far as I know

there were none, and I have the -- I have the entire list of the people in our class,

tourist class, and we did not see Jewish names at all. Most of them, as I say, were

returning visitors to Europe. Did not at all. We did have iceberg practice and we all

got into our assigned jackets and had to parade out. And we were very close to an

iceberg. I think it’s as close as I’d like to get to an iceberg. But it was a drill, and of

course everybody took part. There was a very nice party, I’m told, at the end of the

ride. I don’t think my parents were in -- in a partying mood, but there was a party.

And I should mention to you that the last day, the day that we were supposed to --

that we did in fact land in Montreal, I woke up and could not move. I had total

paralysis of both my legs and my father had to carry me off the boat. This happened

twice in my life. This was the first time, and the second time it happened when, as a




63

student in 1948, I had the -- and I was on an international student service seminar, I

had the opportunity to go back to Germany and the same thing happened. I woke up

paralyzed from my waist down. The paralysis did not last very long. My father

carried me off the boat. The relatives were there to meet us. And in a day the

paralysis was gone. I think they call this a hysterical paralysis, which it undoubtedly

was. Terribly frightened.

Q: What were you frightened of?

A: This new life in a new country where we didn’t know the language, where we

didn’t know anybody really, not even our relatives. I think just terrible fright. But

you know, it happened that time, the first time and we ascribed it to that. But it was

interesting that it should happen -- what was it, 10 years later? Again, and th-the

return visit. And I’ve never been back to Germany, you know.

Q: Did you know any English at all?

A: I didn't. Not at all. And I learned it very quickly. But for the first couple of

months I was very silent, but after that I could grapple with it quite nicely. I sat. My

schoolteacher did not allow me to have a dictionary in school. She wanted me to

absorb it totally by ear, which I guess perhaps was the right thing to do. I was

horrified that I couldn’t have my dictionary, but she didn’t allow it, and I learned it

very well.




64

Q: So you settled in Montreal?

A: We came to Montreal and met Uncle Charlie and Aunt Bertha, the people who

sent the telegram, and their children and it was decided that all of us, Uncle Char-

Charlie, and his wife and the daughter, married Wilfred and their son, and my

mother and father and I would all take a flat together in Montreal. And we did, and

we all lived together for a number of years in one flat, where --

Q: When you mentioned telegram what were you referring to?

A: Well, I think the telegram was sort of the lynchpin, if you will. This was a

telegram that arrived at the wedding, for the wedding of my grandparents, sent by a

distant relative in Canada by the name of Charlie -- Charles Redlish. It was a

telegram that was sent to send congratulations to the wedding of and the mishpoka

of the grandparent, my grandparents. And my grandmother kept that telegram, as she

kept many, many things, and remembered in the 30’s that there was somebody in

Canada who was distantly related. And this telegram really started the

correspondence between my parents and that distant relative that lived in Montreal.

And I have many copies of this telegram because I feel it was the thing that saved

our lives. The one item that established a relationship with family abroad.

Q: When you started school, were you placed in your chronological grade, or a

younger grade?




65

A: No, actually I started in grade four and was in my -- with my own peer group, so

that I had to learn English, but I think I could do most everything else. Math I

certainly could do, and I learned English soon enough. By the end of the year I won

the prize for the best student. So I didn’t do too badly. I worked hard at my studies

because I had so much to catch up on. My distant relative played all kinds of tricks

on me and made me say horrible things because I didn't know what I was saying.

And I got into a lot of trouble, but it sorted itself out.

Q: Did you miss Germany? Did you consider Germany your home at that point?

A: I missed my friends, I missed my grandmothers. I don’t know that I missed the

physical part of Germany. I think at that age perhaps that’s not so important, but I

certainly missed my friends. It was so much -- there was so much to learn and so

much new, and so much to catch up with. It -- the impressions came so hard and so

fast and they were so different. Coming from -- coming from a home, for example,

as we were lucky enough to have, with servants and whatnot to a one room that we

stayed in. We had one room and that -- that was it. It was a -- a new lifestyle, but

you know, my -- my mother particularly was quite adventuresome. My father

became very depressed. My father, who was unable to find work because they

wouldn’t let him work, was in a -- sort of a desperate situation and as the war years

came along, it became even more so. Because remember, in Canada, the war started




66

September the third, 1939. We were at war exactly a year from the date we arrived

in Canada. My father tried to join the army, they wouldn’t have him because he

wasn’t a citizen. He wanted to join the medical corps, they wouldn’t have him

because he wasn’t registered as a medic in Canada and you couldn’t become a

medic in Canada until you took up citizenship. And so all -- everything was closed,

and his main concern was trying to get the grandmothers over. And he had

absolutely no luck in that department. I know he traveled back and forth to Ottawa

trying to persuade the powers that be, the natio -- the commissioner of refugees, a

wonderful woman by the name of Senator Karen Wilson, to see if there was some

way of getting the grandparents out, even if it would be over at the Dominican

Republics, or Cuba, but even that door seemed to be closed because of their ages.

And my father was making creams at that point and my mother, fortunately got a job

and worked very hard. She fortunately met a physician through friends, I guess, or

family, Canadian family, in Montreal, who was very interested in the fact that she

was able to do physiotherapy, which was not done a whole lot on this side of the

ocean. And she was very well trained and it was a period of the polio epidemic

starting. And also, she did post-operative -- broken legs and things like that, she

worked with patients and so on. And she really had a lot of work. She -- she e --

well, in time she even -- we even got an apartment that had a basement in it, a




67

finished basement in which she gave classes, gym classes, and then the rest of the

apartment was rented out to different people -- different rooms. And she -- she did

very well and -- because my father couldn’t work. But he was invited by Dr. Wilder

Pennfield and Dr. Cohen at the Neurological Institute in Montreal, which is a very

well known place, to come on rounds and to hone his skills and to get the English

lingo. And he did that, and in time he met someone who asked him to become an

intern in a hospital in the Maritime provinces of Canada, where the medical people

left in order to join the army. So a place became available where they really needed

his skills, and he -- he worked there until -- until someone said, why do you have

this enemy alien working for the Ca-Canadian government? And he went through a

horrible period of time in which his life was made miserable by the powers that be

because he was -- they considered him as an enemy alien who -- whom they

suspected of being a farmer and a spy. He -- the Mounties came to visit him one day

and he said, take the cameras, because they were afraid that he was photographing

installations on the shore -- o-o -- the seacoast of New Brunswick, which was where

his job was. He went to New Brunswick to take on the job, my mother and I stayed

in Montreal so that she could continue working. And as an intern, you know, it’s

hardly enough to support a family, so they -- we lived in separate places for awhile,

for a number of years. But he even weathered that, and I came across some of the




68

clippings in the newspaper in getting ready to talk to you just the other day and I

didn’t realize the splash that all this made in the newspapers across Canada, that,

you know, the government was employing enemy aliens to -- who were taking

advantage and taking the money from our people. So you come from Germany, you

come to Canada -- and of course, I was called a dirty Jew from Germany in school

in Canada, where you know, the blinders were close to the head. And it was not an

easy time in Canada. It was not.

Q: So how did you handle this? Coming from Germany and hearing this in

Canada?

A: With great difficulty. With very, very great difficulty. But I did have Jewish

friends in class, and I must say, I found -- I found my friends among Jewish kids. All

-- practically only Jewish children in Montreal. And we did not live in a Jewish

section of Montreal at all.

Q: Were -- were these other refugee children, or these were Canadians?

A: In -- they were can -- my friends were Canadian friends, but my mother

circulated with a group o-of refugees because in Montreal they were quite a number

and yes, she had -- well, she also had non -- she also had Canadian friends, but many

not -- many Jewish friends who, like ourselves came over at one time or another.

Q: What about the teachers in the school?




69

A: The teachers in general were absolutely wonderful. I had never of -- I -- been so

well received, and the principal of the school was really -- they were trying so hard

to make me comfortable, and they did. And I had a very -- I had a happy time in

Montreal in school -- well, you know, you always have one teacher that’s maybe

not so great. But I would say, generally speaking, they were wonderful. And in the

Maritimes they could not have been nicer. They were very accepting. Na -- but

nobody ever asked me about where I’m from or why I’m here. Nobody, even when I

went to college, nobody ever brought up the subject. And with a name like Fischer,

y-ye -- and I had no accent, nobody even suspected. And it’s interesting in these last

few years was the first time that my college friends and my high school friends, with

whom I’m still in touch, some of whom I’m still in touch, posed questions to me. I-I

think they were afraid. They didn’t want to rub salt into wounds. I would have been

very happy to talk. I think I would have. In -- in college I would have, but nobody

ever asked, and I wouldn’t -- you know, I wouldn’t speak on my own. In fact, I’ve

not spoken too much, although I have with my children, I’ve told them a fair

amount. Not everything.

Q: Your -- your father was in the Maritime provinces, you were in Montreal.

A: Montreal.

Q: Did you go back and forth to visit?




70

A: Well, no. In the summer, I was sent to camp and my mother went to visit my

father. It was just too expensive. I -- I went to Y camp, and one summer I stayed

with friends who invited me to stay with them while Mother visited my father. And

then other -- then I went to summer camp. One summer, the first summer, I think it

was the summer of ’39 -- the summer of ’39, my mother and father were engaged to

be camp doctor and nurse and I was allowed to go along as addition. And I was a

camper, and they were in charge of things and that gave us all a little vacation in the

mountains.

Q: Wa-Was this a Jewish camp?

A: Yes, Camp Hiawatha. Yes, it was a Jewish camp and my mother met and was

very, very friendly with one of the counselors there, and it was a lifelong friendship

that continued til both of them really passed away. In fact, Sophie came and visited

my mother here when my mother was in the nine -- in her 90’s. Sophie was a bit

younger. The Sophie that I mention is interesting because she’s a poet -- was a poet,

Sophie Yellen, and was one of Canada’s outstanding poets. And si -- the friendship

continued and a wonderful one it was. All happened in Hiawatha.

Q: Did you have, or did your parents have any correspondence or connection with

the people back in -- ya -- the family back in Germany?




71

A: Well, that’s a very interesting question, because yes, they tried to have and they

have letters to their mothers until the war broke out, which was only a year. And

after that, there was no more correspondence. But when my father knew that

somebody was going -- traveling from Montreal to the Maritime provinces, or from

the Maritime provinces back to Montreal, depending on where he was, he would

always ask them would they mail a letter in the one stop that the train made in the

United States. And so yes, they got mail over to them, a-at least to let them know

that things were going well for us, even though the only -- they could only write to

the States, and then States would send us the mail. So that -- that was very di -- that

was traumatic.

Q: Did you write to your grandparents?

A: I don’t know that I did. I don’t know that I did. I don’t think so. I think those little

blue letters were very, very closely written upon and I think maybe I signed my

name, but I don’t re -- I don’t recall writing to them.

Q: Mm-hm. And then as the war proceeded in the early, you know, early 40’s, did

you as a child know what was happening? What was your world like during the war

in Canada?

A: My world was totally consumed with the war. My father used to keep a map on

the wall and punch pins into where the Germans were, and especially once the war




72

started, how the movements of the Germans were taking place, how the forces were

progressing, both into the east zone towards Russia, as well as out to -- through

France and into Holland. And we would listen to news every night, of course, and

as many times during the day as, you know, as there were news on, which wasn’t

always our time. I mean, the news came on at seven o’clock and everybody was

sitting around. And I think it was the most trying of times because my father was

trying to tell people in Canada what was happening and nobody listened. My father

brought out clippings from newspapers, German newspapers that he hid in slatted

areas of his suitcases. He hid them in the linings of the suitcases, to show the powers

that be on this side of the ocean what was happening because nobody was listening

and nobody wanted to believe what was going on. Fortunately, he did not get caught,

because when he was called one time to the police station -- and he was called many

times -- he was very afraid that they might have found something because he was

clipping, he was clipping newspaper articles right and left.

Q: Clipping from which papers?

A: Newspa -- the German newspapers. He was taking sections out of newspapers to

bring here to this side of the ocean --

Q: I see.




73

A: -- in order to tell people who were so unbelieving, of s -- things that were

happening that didn’t make papers here, and people weren’t willing to listen. You

know, when you read what Steven Wise couldn’t even get through. Nobody

listened, nobody. And nobody wanted to. They didn’t want to believe. So you asked

-- I was -- I was totally consumed with the war. I would come in from school and

listen. I listened. It was almost a way of life, wasn’t it?

Q: Were -- were your fam -- was your family aware of what was happening to the

Jews specifically during the war?

A: Oh, oh absolutely. Not -- well, they saw the beginnings of it all when people

disappeared and people just didn’t make it back from the police stations or they were

snatched out of their beds. I mean, that was happening all around. And it was 1938.

Things were not at all tranquil, even -- even in Silesia. I think there was much fear,

there was much fear and there was the constant hope that we could bring the mothers

out.

Q: What happened to your grandmother in Berlin?

A: My grandmother in Berlin was in a round-up and was put on a train and died in

the cattle car on her way to Riga.

Q: And her name?




74

A: Her name was Unni Haushner -- Unni Rosenber -- Rosenbaum Haushner.

She had two children, my mother and Uncle Ludz and Ludz was the younger of the

two and he was smuggled out of Germany by his non-Jewish girlfriend and made it

to the States in ’39, the war had already started, and made it to Chicago, and signed

up almost immediately for the army. And what I’m trying to find out at this point in

time is whether he might have been one of the Ritchie boys. The Ritchie boys, the

German Jewish people who came over who became interpreters and who were sent

back to Germany in the army to help with language things. Because he did indeed

go into the army and became an interpreter and stayed in Germany after the war had

finished to help with the -- with translations for the Nuremberg Trials. But I don’t

know. I’m trying to find out whether he might have been a Ritchie boy because

there’s been some interesting information. Ritchie boys, the camp that was started

here in Maryland that trained linguists -- he might have been, I don’t know. I --

Q: How did he get into the United States now, and you all couldn’t?

A: Well, that’s very interesting. He established -- well, I -- I think that he was able to

come through an uncle on my mother’s side who declared him as being very well

versed in the canning industry. I think that may have been it. He worked for my

grandfather, I mean how -- he -- and he was trained in the chemical aspects of this

canning business.




75

End of Tape Three, Side A

Beginning Tape Three, Side B


volunteer collection interview with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number three,

side B. You were already in Canada when Kristallnacht happened in November

’38. How did you hear about it?

A: Well, I think we probably learned about it through the radio, a-and of course

knew at once that if synagogues were the targets, ours, both in Ratibor and in

Breslau were undoubtedly part of the picture, and indeed they were. I don’t know

that we knew the particulars, but I do know that my father said, and they didn’t burn

part of that synagogue because there were stores around the synagogue that were in

hands of Germans, close to the wall around or near the synagogue. So part of the

building was destroyed, and part of it was not. But the [indecipherable] synagogue,

which is the one that my parents and grandparent went in -- we-were in -- were

members of and where my grandparents had pews, strangely enough next to each

other, we know that that -- we knew that that synagogue was badly damaged in part.

And the pictures have borne that out. They’re in the process of restoring that

synagogue at this point in time, but what I learned -- what we learned, and of course

to the horror of everyone, oh we -- we learned through the radio and then also I




76

believe there must have been notification by mail as to what -- what was damaged.

Interestingly enough, I think that my father and his mother probably had sort of an

understanding of what was going to be said in a -- in a code sort of way, as to the

situation.

Q: This was a code between the two of them so you wouldn’t understand?

A: No, so that -- so -- all the letters were censored at that point and they did not want

the censors to be aware. And I know that certain people’s names were mentioned,

and never with a surname, and maybe with Uncle John did such and such, and you

kind of knew what was going on and I do remember the last letter that my

grandmother wrote. She wrote that she needed some tea, would we be able to send

her some tea, and that was the last -- that was the last letter that we ever received

from her. And in all the letters, it was a little bit upbeat, in I am very well, but -- or --

or I am very well, and then period, and then could you possibly send me some tea.

And we knew that that was a very bad sign. About Kristallnacht itself, other than

hearing it, and of course my parents just speechless with the news that was coming

in, I still see us sitting around the radio, the whole family and really despairing.

Q: You must have been a very old nine year old by that time.




77

A: My mother always said -- she said -- of herself, she said, I had a childhood, you

never had a childhood. And I think it’s true. I don’t think I ever did. And what can I

say? I didn’t have a childhood.

Q: Mm-hm. Any other experiences you can remember about during the wartime

while you were in Canada? I mean, you said your father followed the progress of

the war with the pins.

A: Well, in our Canadian schools, a lot of English guest children came over and so

we had many guest children in our classes. People who opted to send their kids

overseas until the end of the war. And I had a very, very dear friend, Monya

Williams was her name and we stayed in touch for awhile after she went back home.

And life in Canada, as life was here was -- had rationing, we had a lot of rationing. I

think you probably had more rationing than we did, but it was as my mother always

used to say, this isn’t rationing. She went through the first World War, and she said

this was just equalizing things out. It was, you know, very, very little rationing per

se. Nobody ever went hungry. And during the war -- a-as a child during the war I

rolled bandages. I went down to Red Cross headquarters on Saturdays and I helped

served coffee. My mother also w-worked for the Red Cross at the -- at the blood

donating centers. I work -- I -- I helped when we had service personnel come to the

Jewish u -- like a USO. We went and we washed dishes and we served sandwiches




78

to the young soldiers who were coming through. And this was a little bit later on,

this was when the soldiers were coming through the Maritime provinces to get on

the ships to send them overseas. The Jewish lads had a place to come to to dance and

to write letters and just to have a good time, and we teenagers were allowed to help

and that was always -- that was very nice. I had a job very early on. I tried to get a

job in Montreal painting signs, but they thought maybe 11 was too young to get a jo

-- to give anybody a job. But I used to sometimes walk to Sunday school -- to

Hebrew school. I did go to Hebrew school in Montreal, we went to Shaar

Hashomayim, which is a very beautiful, large synagogue and I had Hebrew twice a

week and I had Sunday school, but most of the time I either walked, or more than

likely I took the tram, if I wasn’t lucky enough to get a ride in the Bronsman car.

Now, the Bronsman kids, Charlie and Edgar were classmates of mine at Shaar

Hashomayim, and they had a -- a driver who drove them back and forth from class

to Hebrew school, and once in awhile we got rides with them, and that was very nice

because they had chocolate milk on the cars and the rest of us usually just got white

milk. And my mother, as a matter of fact, in her -- in her physiotherapy capacity

massaged -- gave massages to Mrs. Bronsman. And I remember very well in

Montreal my mother did the Bronsman job, I guess once a week and she would

have to walk, because of course she didn’t have a car and the streetcar or the bus




79

would only carry her so far, and she would have to walk up Westmount. Now mind

you, the Bronsmans lived up on the very top of the hill and there certainly wasn’t a

-- a bus going up there. And so she marched in the cold of winter. And Montreal

can be very icy in wintertime and she got such chilblains, and I remember she came

home, her legs were just so cold. I remember weeping and thinking how she was

suffering. And I asked her about it a number of years back and I said, Mother, I used

to cry so, because I was so unhappy that you had such hard work. And she said oh,

she said, you know, I look back on this and she said it was such a good time. It was

the only time in my life, when we lived in Montreal, where I was an independent

woman and where I carried the family on my shoulders, and she said that was very

satisfying. I go -- I -- I’ve mulled that over many, many times, and indeed it was.

She did wonderful work in -- in her capacity as therapist.

Q: So, did you experience any anti-Semitism during the war years in Canada?

A: I would say, other than being called names in school every now and again, dirty

Jew from Germany --

Q: Oh, right.

A: -- I would say those were really very few times.

Q: Ho-How would you respond when that happened?

A: I think I just walked away from it. I don’t think that I could respond to it. I would




80

think I could not. I still recall exactly where these encounters took place, and they

were not in sight of the teachers, they were when we were having recess, either

playing marbles, or downstairs. On very cold days we were -- we were just mulling

around and sitting on the benches and so on for -- for a little time out. And it wasn’t

the boys as much as the girls that were nasty. But maybe girls are nastier to each

other anyway.

Q: Did you tell your parents about these incidents?

A: Probably not. I don’t know. Probably not, I think -- I think I just did not want

them to worry about things more than they did. They had -- they had so many

worries on their shoulders. My father, who couldn’t work and who wanted so much

to work. And y -- no -- you know, no money coming in. My mother, who worked so

hard, and nothing in the offing for my father and that must have been, to the kind of

person that he was, a tremendous blow. And -- however, he had a fantastic sense of

humor all -- all his life, and I think maybe it even helped him then when things

looked so bleak. And I think the frustration that he carried within him, having so

much information, wanting to tell people -- he even was in touch with a writer from

the newspaper who was the son of somebody who knew somebody, you know,

closer, and not just the man on the street. And nobody wanting to believe. I think

that must have been so frustrating.




81

Q: Mm-hm. Did you feel German at that point? Canadian, Jewish? How would you

describe yourself during the war years in Canada?

A: Well, I didn’t feel Canadian, certainly not. Everything was very strange to me. I

didn’t feel German. I guess I felt Jewish. And maybe not by choice, but I was made

to feel Jewish. Not that, you know, not that I wouldn’t say I was Jewish, but I think

yes, I think I was made to feel Jewish. I remember a sad thing. I was walking in

front of a shop one day, looking at some baked goods in the bakery store, I’d --

would feast my eyes on all these good, good things. And there was my father, I

didn’t realize that he was in back of me, looking at me -- so he tells me, and I’m sure

it’s true -- with not enough change in his pocket to buy me the little roll that I

wanted, that I would have liked to have had. It -- I think, you know, these are such

small things in the scheme of things, but such humiliating and -- and depressing

reactions. I mean, I think of it often. I’m sure he never thought of it that much any

more after the fact. He was a realist, it couldn’t happen at that point. I, on the other

hand, internalized the whole thing. And -- yeah.

Q: And so you made -- you continued to make friends though, when -- y-you were

talking about during those times?

A: Yes, I had -- I made friends, I had no trouble making friends. Made good friends.

And then, of course, I was in Montreal only fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh -- four years




82

in Montreal and then we moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where my father

got the job as an intern, but we were not able to join him until the four years were

over and h-he was able to get an apartment and get enough money to support us,

because my mother did not work after we came to Saint John.

Q: And then how long did you stay there?

A: And we stayed in Saint John -- well, I was married in Saint John. So I think my

parents moved in 1955. My father got his citizenship in 1945 or ’46, and then took

his Dominion Council exams and passed his exams so that he could go into practice,

which he did, and then he be -- he became a diabetic and had some physical

problems and so it was thought that he should give up private practice and go into a

hospital situation, which he did in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And it was a psychiatric

hospital there, and he was in charge of all the woman patients, I think, at that

hospital. And he stayed there until he retired and he was -- that was ’78, I guess. So

he was there quite a number of years and they made a very happy life in Halifax.

Saint John was a very small town, little in-bred. I mean, it was very small in every

way. And moving to Halifax was really a nice thing for them to do because first of

all it was a beautiful city and then it had the stimulation of having a university there.

Two, as a matter -- three -- three universities, with a lot of cultural things going in,

which they loved. And they got a house on the Dartmouth side of the -- of the city




83

and then they joined us. When my father -- when my father retired, he wanted to

move Mom and himself down to Knoxville, which they did. They came and they

joined us in Knoxville and were there a couple of years when my husband was

called by the NIH to come and work here and to head the department of blood

diseases. And so my parents said, well we’d like to go back to Halifax. With heavy

heart. They -- they did not want to come to the Washington area. So they moved

back to Halifax and had many more good years in Halifax until my father died and

then my mother did indeed come to visit -- I mean, come to stay with us, and that

was good.

Q: Let’s go back a little bit in time, to the end of the war. What was it like for you

when the war was over?

A: Oh, it was the most freeing, wonderful experience. I remember being in camp,

and my father sending me information about the victory, and all hell broke loose in

camp. This was Canadian camp, you know? And it was such a freeing -- it was like

tearing away ropes that bound one’s chest, really. And of course, with it came the

realization that even though the war was over, there were so many gone. I

remember, for example, in the middle of one night when my mother woke us all up

screaming. And this was in the 40’s, the early 40’s. And to this day she thinks that

was the day that her mother was killed. And -- and probably it was. Probably it was.




84

But the fact that the war was over was -- at least the European part of the war was

over. This was not yet the end because -- but Canadian forces were not in the

Pacific. So in a way, for us that war was over.

Q: During the war, during the latter parts of the war, did your family know anything

about the camps, or did that come out only later for them?

A: You know, I had the feeling that they did know about the camps because there

were some camps that were already in existence when we were in Germany.

Mauthausen for one, and Dachau. So, I think they were very well aware of what

was going on, and I don’t know, but they kept in very close touch with friends who

had also emigrated, and when one got, you know, word about anything, that they

would share with the adults, not the -- not the children. And as I say, for many years

my father tried so desperately to get the grandmothers out, and would go to the

States in order to do some of his work. I mean, up to Ottawa, down here to this

area. But there was -- there was no way.

Q: Mm-hm. So the war is over, did the camp celebrate at all, or did you celebrate in

any specific way? Was it a Jewish camp?

A: No. No, I don’t think there was a celebration. I can’t -- I can’t -- I can’t -- I don’t

know.

Q: And you were 16 then?




85

A: Yeah. Ah --

Q: In 1945.

A: Yeah, I w -- yeah, right.

Q: And then what happened, just generally with your life, from 16 on?

A: Well, I’ll tell you a wonderful thing that happened. After all -- after the war was

over, my parents wanted to adopt a child from a DP camp. And indeed they did. Our

darling Saul came to us -- my father had wanted to have a son, a boy come. He

didn’t have a boy of his own, I think, and he probably thought it was best not to have

another girl. So arrangements were made through the Canadian -- mm, I can’t think

of the organization, but it was a refugee organization, and in time Saul arrived with

a number of other children who were brought to Canada, for whom homes were

found, and he came to live with us. And he came, I was away in college already and

when I came home from college, here was this new addition to the family. Well, as it

turned out, he was with us for awhile, and when he gain -- when he realized the kind

of person Mom and Dad were, he said, you know, I really have a mother, but I was

afraid -- a -- a blood mother who survived -- and -- but I want -- I needed to get -- I

wanted to get out and the only way to get out was to declare myself as an orphan,

which is how he got into Canada, and --

Q: How old was he and where was he from?




86

A: He was from Poland, I re -- I don’t know the name of the town. I think I can look

it up, but I don’t know the name of the town. And his mother and one sister

survived. The rest of his family, his father and his other brothers and sisters did not,

but these two survived. And of course as soon as my father heard that there was

blood kin, he did his level best to get them out and -- and did. And, as a matter of

fact, next week I am going to Los Angeles to be present at the Bar Mitzvah of his

grandson. And we have kept in close touch. Saul stayed with my family for a

number of years, went to high school in Saint John, stayed with Mom and Dad and

then decided he would like to go to Montreal where there were more Jewish kids.

And he became a typesetter and type -- was able to do typesetting in English and

Fren-French and in Yiddish. And then got a job in Los Angeles and took his mother

and sister to Los Angeles, and that’s where he is today. He married a girl from

Poland, from his village, and as I say, we’re going to see them next week. They

have come to all our simchas, we have tried to be at theirs. And it’s a very happy

and wonderful relationship. It’s -- it’s a different sort o -- probably not like a kin --

an -- a blood kin relationship, but it’s a wonderful relationship. And there isn’t a

week that goes by that we don’t talk. And he’s a lot of health issues with his wife

over the last six months and I think I talked to him every other day. And --

Q: HoHo-w old was he when he came to your family?




87

A: 16. He was a little younger than -- no, he was 14, he was 14, yeah. And it -- it

was something that I know my mom and dad wanted to do it and you know, you

never know how things work out, but I think this worked out very well.

Q: What was his last name -- what is his last name?

A: Saul S-Silvershein -- Silvershein, but he changed it to Saul Silver.

Q: Yeah. So you finished high school, you went on to college, where did you go to

college?

A: I went to college in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University and I studied

chemistry. Not by choice, I wanted to go to art school, but my parents wouldn’t let

me go to art school, I had to do something practical with which I could earn my keep

and preferably not something that required a change of language. And being the

good daughter that I was, I did not fight the thing, this was ordained, my father had

said so, and I did it. I went to college, I did well in school, and ended up going to

graduate school at the University of Chicago in microbiology, for which the

province paid. Then I -- but then I met my husband and that’s the tale. I met my

husband while I was at the University of Chicago, at international house. I w -- I, as

an international student and he as a good representative of American-hood. He was

in a residency at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. And it was love at first sight

and we got married in 1953 in Saint John, New Brunswick, my parents were still




88

living in Saint John, and we moved to Saint Louis, where he finished his residency

and our first child was born in Saint Louis, David. And then we moved to Durham,

North Carolina where he was at Duke and Susan was born. And then we moved to

Knoxville, Tennessee, where he headed a research unit of the University of

Tennessee and Judy was born, and then we didn’t move any more, until we moved

here. It was too late then.

Q: Whe-When did you move to the Washington area?

A: About 20 years ago, which would have been -- well, 25 almost, 1980.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: 1980. And our kids went on to make good lives for themselves. David is at

Cornell, he’s a professor at Cornell. Our daughter Susan is an attorney in Chicago

with two children, and Judy, who is a physician, lives in Laurel and she has two

children. So we are so blessed with four grandchildren, and good kids all the way

around.

Q: Di-Did you say earlier that you had gone back to Germany? Can you tell me

about that?

A: Last year, plans were made to take the children, our three children to Germany.

We had plans ready in action, and unfortunately I got sick. Now, whether this was a

return of the paralysis, I don’t know, but I really did get ill, and it was advised that I




89

not go. It was a cardiac thing and it was deemed not -- not good to take any long

trips, so --

Q: So you --

A: -- we did not go. I have not been back, not ever been back. I shouldn’t say that. I

went -- that’s to my hometown -- hometowns. I did go back. Amos had to deliver a

lecture in Berlin and I had an old aunt who survived the war. A non-Jewish wife of a

brother of my grandfather’s who survived the war in Berlin, and we -- since Amos

went to gi -- talk there, I wanted to see her because she really was a favorite of the

family. And she did survive and we did see her and we had a wonderful visit. So yes,

I’ve been back to Berlin, but only to see her and I saw nothing of Berlin, I just saw

her.

Q: That was purposeful, not to see anything of Berlin?

A: I think so. I think so. I really -- I wa -- I don’t think I was up to it, really, but I did

want to see her because she was a very --

Q: What year was this? How long ago?

A: It must have been in the 70’s.

Q: Mm-hm. Yeah.

End of Tape Three, Side B




90

Beginning Tape Four, Side A


volunteer collection with Renate Chernoff. This is tape number four, side A. Let’s

now talk about some of your thoughts and feelings about what you went through.

You said before that your mother had said you really didn’t have a childhood. Do

you agree with her?

A: I do. And I’ll tell you, to this day, though I have a large circle of friends, I am still

an outsider. I still feel myself as removed from others. Not that there -- not that I

don’t have friends, I have plenty of friends, but I’m still the one who’s looking in.

And some days I find this rather discouraging. I think -- I think that in my artwork, a

lot of it has dealt with Holocaust and Holocaust issues, and even there I feel as

though there is a layer between me, my work -- me and my -- and friends, and I

don’t know how else to explain it.

Q: Do you feel in a sense that you are like -- you are two people, one person on the

inside and one person on the outside?

A: I guess so, because most people think I’m rather a jolly person, that I am full of

fun and games and beans. And I can be that person, but I -- I’m not that person. I’m

really reserved and I am withdrawn at times. I get very easily depressed, and I have

kept a journal of some of my thoughts, not -- not often, but there are times. I have




91

insomnia. And I have the dreadful need -- and I say dreadful because I dread it, I

guess, I have to read every scrap of Holocaust literature I can put my hands on.

Whether I can find an adequate answer to something, or when I look at broadcasts

on the television, I’m looking for those people that are no longer in my life. I look

for my grandmothers everywhere and I keep saying sometime I’m going to see them

again. And I busy myself in -- in a quiet way, with many of the questions of the

Holocaust. And I’ve tried to read not only people who -- work of people who have

gone through it, but of authorities who have written about it, and studies that have

been -- psychological studies that have been done. I guess I’m trying to answer, who

am I. And -- and it all has made me what I am today, I guess, but I’d like to know,

you know, why. I often say oh, if life had been different and if I had -- if this had

happened and if that had happened. But everybody says that. You don’t have to be in

-- in ma -- in my shoes or anybody else’s shoes, everybody asks that. But I

sometimes think my life would have been so different if times had been -- in th --

had run in a normal way and I had grown up in Germany and gone to school in

Germany. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as interesting at this point in time, but it

would have been very different.

Q: You had said that you went back to Germany and visited your aunt, but that’s all

you did. Why did you not see more of Germany?




92

A: Well, for one thing we only had a few days in Berlin, being practical about this.

Amos was asked to give a lecture and we went and we came back. I think I wasn’t

ready to go back and I don’t believe it was easy to get to Breslau at that point in

time. Berlin was open, Breslau o -- I don’t think was a tourist place -- tourist -- not

that it needed to be a tourist place, but I don’t think it was a place that wa -- I -- I --

we di -- we didn’t do it. I -- I -- I wish I -- I wish I could tell you more, but we

didn’t, and it was a ma -- it was really a factor of time, and of fear, and of fear. You

know, you want to go back and you don’t want to go back. We’ve gone back to

places where we had visited. We lived in Thailand for awhile and went back 30

years later and were so sorry as to what had happened to the country. I like to

remember it the way it was 30 years ago. Now, everything that I remember -- not

everything, but things that I remember in the -- in Germany at the countryside, and

meadows and -- and the beautiful winters and so on, they’re still there. The h -- th-

the houses and the buildings in my mind are still the ones that are there, they’re not

there any more. That area was terribly shot up, particularly the Russians took their

guns to that area. And I don’t -- perhaps didn’t know or didn’t want to know what

had really happened. Although some of my friends have gone back. My friend in

Israel has gone back several times. But, interestingly enough, she is a year older

than I am and couldn’t remember a thing. And yet, I’m the visually one -- visually




93

active one, and I can remember it and I -- no. But I -- I think I’m ready to go back

now. I would like to be well and go next year, and we’re talking about it.

Q: What was it like though, when you put your foot down on German soil again,

when you went back?

A: I did not like it and I did not tell anybody that I could understand what they were

saying, because I could. I did not speak German, I spoke only in English. And it’s

very interesting when a German talks German to me, I question in my mind, where

were you and where was your family? Take an example. My next door neighbor a

few years ago was a couple. He was from Germany, he was a writer for the

Frankfurter Allgemeine, wonderful German, conservative German newspaper, a

good newspaper, though. He was married to a Spanish gal and they lived next door

and it took me at least half a year before I could be comfortable with him. They had

since become perhaps our closest friends and neighbors. They -- you know, if

anybody could make me feel that maybe the younger generation today is different,

he was the one. I am still in touch with them, they have moved back to -- well, at this

point to Spain. He still is writing for the Frankfurter Allgemeine. I watched their

daughter grow up, I babysat with the daughter. I have a little plant here that’s my

little Laura plant because she gave it to me. They are -- he is such a dear person and

he has -- the one who has sent me books on Ratibor and Breslau and tried to make




94

contacts for me to make it easy for me to go back if I wanted to go back. The dearest

people in this world. And I hope -- I hope that the young people today are like him

because he’s an incredible person, maybe one of our best friends. So --

Q: Did you tell him about your experiences?

A: Oh yes. He asked and I told him, and he was also -- he was the first writer who

wrote anything about the memorial -- the memorials, the Holocaust memorials in

Florida. He was -- and he had an interview, one of the very few interviews that were

given by the chap who headed the memorial -- the Holocaust Memorial Center.

Now, he was the one from Israel -- was there one --

Q: Weinberg, Shaika Weinberg?

A: Yes. He had one of the few interviews and had a two hour interview with him and

was amazed and thrilled to have it. He was often a visitor over there. He was an un --

he’s an unusual person, to say the least.

Q: Are there any sights or sounds, smells, or anything that bring back the experience

that you had?

A: Mm. Well, the sight of boots, leather boots, black leather boots. Not suede boots,

but black -- shiny, black leather boots, and the rhythm of the -- of this -- o -- th-the

marching rhythm really, really bothers me very much. Now, on the other hand, I can

listen to Wagner music and be absolutely thrilled by it and where’s the logic there?




95

There is no such thing as logic. Smells, I don’t think I’m at all aware of. And did --

did you say sights?

Q: Mm-hm, or sounds.

A: Sounds.

Q: Which you talked about.

A: The sound -- the --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- the beating of the -- of the cobblestones, feet on cobblestones, yeah.

Q: Do you think in German?

A: I count in German, I do my sums in German. I’m not very good at using a little

machine, so I -- I do all my math in German. I read German, I -- I would say I’m

fluent in every day German. I read slowly, stuff that’s a little bit more complicated,

because after all, I kind of stopped talking German when I came to Canada and my

parents wanted to improve their English, so of course I had spoke English to my

parents. But -- but I did speak German, and -- when I went home, Mother and I

always did try to keep it up at least a little. But I feel comfortable speaking German

ma -- if I know who I’m talking to. Otherwise I don’t open my mouth and let on.

Q: Why not?




96

A: I don’t like to think -- I don’t li -- th-there is a sound in the German language

when I sometime hear people speak, that rarely there is a brashness about the

language that bothers me. If I know that they are German Germans, I-I just -- I don’t

react. I can listen and know exactly what they’re talking about. But there is a

manner, there is a brusqueness ab -- the German tongue in some -- some people that

I find a little difficult to take.

Q: When your -- when your children were the ages -- the age that you were, seven,

eight, nine, when you were going through those difficult times in Europe, did that

bring back th -- your childhood experiences even more vividly?

A: I guess I was -- I was a tougher mother probably, than I needed to be. I was

probably a more careful mother, in many respects a stricter mother. My children tells

-- tell me that I was fairly strict. But I guess the -- the inclination is to -- to now let

anything happen, to be careful, to not see them hurt, as I was. They had very good

rapport with each other and with their cohorts and I think they had very happy

childhood and very often I was just peeking in. I’m not sure I answered your

question very well. Pose it to me again, please.

Q: I -- I was just thinking, when your children were the same age, when they were

seven, eight and nine, when you were going through these difficult times in Europe,




97

did you look at them and did it make you think of your age -- what you went through

at that time? When --

A: Yes, I think particularly with the -- with the two girls. Not so much with my son.

I could identify less with him, of course. But yes, I -- I guess I -- I did, I -- I did think

-- I did think so often how fortunate, how fortunate they were to be born in this

country and to live in this wonderful, wonderful country, of which I became a

citizen, not too long ago. I did not -- I was a Canadian citizen for a long period of

time and then when I started to critique the government, I was told I better take out

citizenship. You cannot criticize -- well, the story was ma -- my husband needed Q

clearance for his work, and so ah -- I -- I did take out my citizenship and it was a

very formal thing in Knoxville, Tennessee in the old-fashioned way and it was

wonderful. It was a day to remember. And my children were there and they were just

sorry I couldn’t become the president of the United States, that’s all.

Q: Did you tell your children as they were growing up, about your background?

A: You know, it -- it’s interesting, I did and I didn’t. I think I -- I was hesitant until

they asked questions and then when they asked questions I tried to answer as

truthfully as I could. On the other hand they, like I, did not want to rub, you know,

salt into any wounds. They did not want to put me into a situation that would make it

hard on me, as I did to my mother, because I did not want to hurt her. I -- I did share




98

with them, especially the school experiences. I di -- I shielded them, I think, a great

deal as to what happened to the grandmothers. I just -- I couldn’t talk about it and

obviously they couldn’t either. But we watched together many offerings on

television which prompted questioning, and I was tra -- I tried to answer as best I

could, what I thought was appropriate for their ages. So in a way I did share. But I

think -- I think now -- I think now that more is being written and more is known.

The children today -- I mean, my -- my grown children today feel freer to ask me

and I am able to answer them, perhaps a little bit better than before. And even my

grandchildren have asked me questions and I’m very willing to answer. And my

grandchildren range in age from 13 to 17. So I have a good range there, and they --

the thi -- the youngest one, who has just turned 13, is the only one who has not yet

been really exposed to things. But were he to ask, I would certainly be able to -- to

answer, I think.

Q: Are you angry that you had to go through and your family had to go through and

pay the price that it did and people living in this country didn’t have to?

A: Sometimes. But you know, on the other hand, I am so grateful that things turned

out relatively well for our family. And they did. I sometimes am very angry that the

world didn’t respond. On the other hand, we were so lucky and I feel so blessed that

I have come -- I’m much less angry now than I was at one time, and I think that in




99

my early adult years, I was very angry. But I think, as I’m getting older I’m -- I’m

seeing it perhaps more in perspective. And I think the -- who in the world would

have known, or would have believed what was happening? I mean, the whole thing

is so in-inconceivable. That’s why I think I -- I-I -- I am much more aware and --

and worried about places like Darfur, because again the world is silent. But not

quite as silent as they were then because we were inoculated at that point with a --

with a virus, if you will. So I cannot -- you know, I -- I’m far less angry now than I

was.

Q: Were you involved in any way in the civil rights movement because you came

from a country that deprived many people of their civil rights, did you respond to

that?

A: I was very involved in the civil rights movement. We lived in Knoxville,

Tennessee and we lived there during the marches, and we lived there during the sit-

ins and we lived there during the non-mixing of the races, and I was very involved. I

took part in sit-ins in the south when it wasn’t exactly a picnic to do that. And I was

one of the very, very few white people who became a counselor at a black -- a mixed

-- well, it was not mixed, it was a black camp, and I was maybe one of the few white

people who, during those times went and taught at a camp when I was thr -- we were

threatened. The camp was threatened because it had some black and whites together.




100

But I felt strongly enough -- in fact, I felt so strongly about going to that camp, my

little Judy was 18 months old and I took her in her stroller to that camp. I felt that if

-- you know, maybe we didn’t have the money with which to -- to -- to give large

donations, I felt my place was to do the right thing, and so I -- it was very close to

that movement and we always had friends who were -- black friends who came to

our house and with whom we, you know, worked together. My husband was the first

one who gave a black person a job at the University of Tennessee Memorial

Research Center. Yes, we were very involved, always have been.

Q: Do you think that’s because of your history?

A: I think so. It’s also because we’re Jewish. That’s -- that’s our religion, and we

have to live it. And that was one way of doing it.

Q: Which was going to be my next question about what your thoughts are about

being Jewish, after all your family suffered because -- and you did too, because you

were Jewish, I was just wondering what your thoughts on that subject was.

A: More Jewish than ever. Not necessarily in the religious sense, but in the way of

life sense of doing the right thing and supporting the right causes. And helping

where help is needed and living the exemplary life that our religion teaches us to

live. And you know, whether I go to sh -- s -- Shabbat services every Saturday,

that’s not my thing. I go, I do gis -- I -- I go to Yizker services and I go to the high




101

holiday services, and I do go to Sabbath services. But to me it’s the -- it’s the every

day life. And I -- I hope I have instilled that in my children, because one of my

children worked for the brown lung situation, has worked in the mountains of

Appalachia, doing good work. And they’ve taken synagogue activities very

seriously, but not the -- maybe not the little things, but in helping the homeless and

that sort of a thing, so I think they’re instilled hopefully with -- with that -- those

thoughts in mind. Am I more religious? Well, it depends what you call religious. I li

-- I live my life in the best way I know how to. I serve on the Hevre Kadisha at my

synagogue. I did a lot of volunteer work when I was younger. I taught Sunday

school, all that good stuff. Going to synagogue, depends. I like to think that

[indecipherable]

Q: So being discriminated because you were Jewish, and losing relatives who were

close to you because you were Jewish has not negated any of your feelings about it?

A: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I would say it may have

reinforced the doing of the right thing at all times and be it in very simple and easy

ways of doing the right thing or -- or making more difficult decisions. It has not

negated it. I know many people left their religions on the other side of the ocean

when they came over. I was not one of those.

Q: Uh-huh.




102

A: Nor were my parents, in fact, quite on the contrary. It had ma -- made them more

s -- much more religious and they too, fought for the good causes.

Q: Let’s talk a little -- just more about some history. When the Eichmann trial was

going on in Jerusalem, what were your thoughts at that time?

A: Get the bastard. I don’t know, at that point I probably was in a way seeking

revenge. I -- I really can’t -- I can’t remember how I felt at the time. I watched it

diligently and I felt that Israel came up with the right answer. Of killing him.

Putting him to his [indecipherable]

Q: If you -- if you hadn’t gone through what you did go through, do you think you

would be a different person? Are you --

A: Oh, absolutely.

Q: In what way are you the person you are today, attributed to your history?

A: I think if I had lived in Germany and brought -- had been brought up in

Germany, I would have had a -- a much more superficial kind of life. I think I

would have been a pampered daughter, certainly a pampered granddaughter. I was

the only granddaughter on both sides, and the apple, I guess, of many eyes and I

think my life would have been very different. I don’t know that I would have gone to

university, I probably wouldn’t. I probably would have done something much more

frivolous. I’m not -- well, I don’t know, but I’m not so sure that causes would had




103

stirred me so, as -- well certainly the civil rights cause did, but there were so many

other causes that, you know, that my husband and I were associated with. And he

comes from a very, very strong Zionist background and his father was a rabbi. I’m

sure Aba Chernoff thought his son married out of the faith, but -- I don’t keep a

kosher house and that sort of thing, but I think -- and you know. I-I don’t know, I

think I would have been a -- a pampered girl in Germany. Maybe not, but you

know, this is speculation and life is life and I am just -- you know, I am so grateful,

there isn’t a day that I don’t thank the fact that I’m here and that I’ve got four

grandkids who are well and healthy and -- and life goes on. And it’s -- it’s a good

place to be at in -- in life because when Amos and I got married, life was not easy

for us, but we muddled through somehow and -- and here we are.

End of Tape Four, Side A

Beginning Tape Four, Side B


volunteer collection interview with Renate Chernoff. Tell me a little bit about your

artwork. What media do you work in, and what subjects? You had mentioned the

Holocaust before, and so if you could expand on that?

A: Well, I -- I was a frustrated art student when I was studying microbiology and

really all my life wanted to go to art school. Wasn’t allowed to because of other




104

matters. However, finally, after my children stayed in school til 3:30 in the

afternoon, my husband urged me to do what I’ve always wanted to do and that was

to go to art school, which I did. I went to school at the University of Tennessee in

Knoxville. And first I -- he had had a -- a second heart attack at that point in our

story and I again thought well, I should go back to school and learn to do something

that would prepare me to earn a living, God forbid, and thought I would study art

education. However, after the second class of art education I decided that was not for

me under any circumstances. Perhaps I should try the art school. And he wanted

very much to have me do that and so I did go to art school and I studied

metalworking. And I -- I learned how to s -- do metalsmithing, metalcasting and all

aspects of the metal as an a -- as a tool, and taking a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at

the university. And worked in metals and also had to choose a second part and that

was fibers, and so I took metals and fibers both, and then interesting situation arrived

in the sense that after two years I was told -- and I was working part time because I

still had the carpools and the kids and 18 puppies and all that sort of thing -- I was

told I had to choose a thesis project. And so I decided I would write a thesis on the

history of the ceremonial objects pertaining to the Torah and make contemporary

pieces based on the research of the history of each of these as implements on their

own. And that’s what I did. So I made breastplates and I made [indecipherable]




105

pointers, and I proposed the [indecipherable] and I made the covering for the

Torahs and I made mezuzahs and all sorts of other things along the side, learning

the technique. But I wanted to do something that was a bit cerebral as well as doing -

- creating something new, and so that I did. And I wrote a thesis, a thick book, which

-- the work of which I enjoyed tremendously, both doing the library re-research,

which was a little difficult from Knoxville, Tennessee, but the university got me all

kinds of books that I needed to and I was able to do that and in my graduate show I

showed my pieces, and it was accepted and I was a happy camper. I graduated in

1973 with all my dear ones around me. Cap and gown and the whole thing, and

David graduated from high school. So we had a gala celebration together. And then

we left Knoxville and I had -- I had the use of the university lab to do my work in

and then we came to Knoxville and I no longer had a lab to work in and so I decided

perhaps it was time to switch from doing metalwork, which required gas, which I

find very hard to -- to keep in my house, which psychologically was very difficult

for me to have a gas tank in my house.

Q: [indecipherable]

A: Because of -- because of memories or thoughts about gas. I decided I would go

ahead and carry on with weaving, which I loved, and I did tapestry weaving on -- I

have a loom and I used the loom for various tapestry projects. But all along I still




106

loved my metal. And so, in the l-last number of years I’ve combined the two and I

weave metal on my loom. And it’s wire that I use, and I use stainless steel wire and

copper wire and brass wire and I weave it on my loom and I do sculptural pieces.

Many of them are Judaic. I take really my inspiration from the jew -- things Judaic.

And of course, I have concentrated both on the liturgy -- I’ve done a series on the

High Holy Day prayers, but I’ve also done Holocaust series and I did one particular

six piece Holocaust -- progression of thoughts on the Holocaust from the earliest

days to the final days. And so -- and also my metal, my woven metal -- metal pieces

are [indecipherable] boxes and things that could -- that could be used in worship or

in home worship at least. I made mis -- mizrahs and the -- various other implements

where I can use the wos -- woven fi -- the woven fabric made out of metal. And the

combination of the technique of the loom plus the material of the metalsmith has

given me a great deal of satisfaction, and I still continue working, very much

influenced by my Judaic background, and very happy doing what I’m doing.

Q: Can you describe your -- your six panel work that you did relating to the

Holocaust in a little more detail?

A: Okay. I called it “Never Again” and it is really a -- a group. It’s made up of six

individual pieces and you’ll see a lot of symbolism in this, o-of course. It -- it’s a

progression of the events that occurred from the beginnings, relating increasingly to




107

the restrictive things, of the ims -- restrictive laws of the Nazi regime in the 30’s.

The second panel details Kristallnacht using my synagogue as a -- part of the

synagogue as my emphasis. The third is badges, reminding us of the oppressive acts

of the Nazis when they tried to cleanse the country of undesirables. Incarceration, a

progression for the confinement, enclosure and last journeys. The rapid escalation to

-- to convey to and remove prisoners from the camps. I think one of the ideas that I

used o-on the side, there’s a progression from one to six, I used the stripes of the

tallid, progressing from one to six. I chose six because of the reference to six

million. My last piece is a very dark one, but it has a little glimmer of gold, and that

is our hope for the future, that these things never happen again. They’re small

tapestries. I wanted them small so that one has to lean into them in order to really

study them, more like putting one’s nose into a book, if you will, by coming thr --

into very close contact. I used cotton material because it was a non-precious

material. I felt that I wanted to use something rather universal and simple and there

are -- there are many references to numbers and to colors and to the stripes on the

prisoners garb. And the colors of the -- the badges, which represented different

factions, not only Jews, but people in general who were incarcerated. It’s a series

that I did not start with piece number one, strangely enough, piece number five was

the first one I did, and then kind of wove. I knew I wanted to do six pieces, but




108

started with number five and then went backwards and started to number one. The

first one has a few let -- letters in it, and it says Jude Raus, but if you’ll see the d-e

and the u-s is Deus, and my question is where was Deus, where was God then? It

was a mammoth undertaking psychologically for me to do this piece, but I hope that

the children will look on it sometime and remember what happened to all of us.

Q: Have you been to the Holocaust Museum, or any other Holocaust museum or

Yad Vashem?

A: I have been to Yad Vashem and I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in

Washington many, many times. I go frequently. I feel privileged in the fact that I

can go and read names on Yom HaShoah. I take every visitor that comes to visit me

here in Washington to the museum. I find it an e-extremely uplifting as well as the

other extreme. I feel both buoyed by the experience and I feel very sad and -- and --

and live it again and again but I feel sometimes it’s important to go and just be there

and see maybe just one or two of the exhibits, or go to the library and do a little

research on subject matter that’s very dear to your heart. And I -- as I say, I go very

frequently. I go to the bookshop, I find very wonderful books there to -- to take

home. And I find it an -- perhaps the most unusual place to visit in Washington and

I tell every one of my visitors they mustn’t leave Washington without going and

they will be well rewarded in different ways by going. I think that the teaching




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programs there are just remarkable. I love the fact that so many of the teaching is

done, not only teaching children, but teaching the police force that comes through

the gates, the teachers. I like the spirit of the workers there, who are just remarkable

people who -- I can’t say enough for it. I think we are just so blessed to have the

museum here. And have I been to others? I’ve been to Yad Vashem and I will

probably go to the Wiesenthal Center when I go to Los Angeles next week.

Q: In closing, is there anything else that we haven’t talked about, or any message

you wanted to give to your children or your grandchildren, before we close?

A: Learn well the lesson, as the great philosopher said. You are fated to wander

through it again if you don’t learn the lesson well.

Q: That is a very important note to end on. Thank you very much for doing the

interview. This concludes the interview of Renate Chernoff.

End of Tape Four, Side B

Conclusion of Interview



Documents

Interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff June 23, 2005 ...collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.106.0166_trs_en.pdf · Interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff June 23, 2005 2 the